Infinity Times Infinity
by Deranged Black Kitten
Summary: Several months have passed since Rick left and the Federation took charge of Earth. Morty's trying to adjust, but suddenly he's being plagued by hallucinations of memories that aren't his and lives he's never lived. He feels like he's losing his mind. He doesn't understand what any of it means, what could possibly be wrong with him—and this time Rick's not around to fix things.
1. Chapter 1

_This is my first time writing a Rick and Morty fic, the show really sucked me in, so I hope you all enjoy! This story takes place several months after the Season 2 finale._

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 **Chapter 1  
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 _He doesn't know where he is or how he came to be here, his surroundings are faded and indistinct – a room, he thinks; steel paneling and bolts, braided wires hanging down and glowing shapes in his peripheral. He doesn't turn to look though, doesn't try to focus his vision and figure out where he is, because there's a mirror in front of him, crisp and clear unlike everything else around him._

 _It's the reflection staring back at him that catches his attention, throws him off, because it's… it's wrong. The reflection is wrong._

 _It's himself, sure; same mussed brown hair and pale complexion, but whereas Morty feels nervous and confused, his reflection looks calm and in control—and the most distinct thing of all, the most unsettling, is the eye patch bound over his reflection's right eye._

 _He startles back a step, one hand flying up to his own face to check, but there's no eye patch there, only a dull pain and a sticky liquid pooling in his eye. He blinks, fat drops of it dripping down his cheek and over his fingertips, and he pulls his hand away quick, expecting to find blood. His reflection watches him, completely still, not copying his movements, but Morty only vaguely notices this once he catches sight of the strange blue substance coating his fingers. It's clear and thick like liquid soap. It doesn't burn though. It makes his eyelashes stick together, but it doesn't feel like much of anything._

" _You're in over your head," his reflection says, and Morty's attention snaps back up to the mirror. There's no sign of a stutter in his copy's voice, another clear distinction between them._

" _W-what?"_

" _Frankly though, I'm curious to see what the results will be," his reflection continues, seeming to be speaking more to himself than to Morty at this point. "You'll have to tell me how it goes… if you can."_

" _W-w-wait," Morty tries to say, but he can't get the words out. His head feels fuzzy and everything around him is growing more out-of-focus. "What are you—?"_

 _._

Morty's eyes peel open and his breath hitches in his chest. He's on the bathroom floor, porcelain sink looming above him and cool tiles pressing patterns into his face. There are puddles of water on the floor around him, soaking into his clothes and flattening his bangs to his forehead in wet strings. Someone's pounding on the door, rattling at the doorknob to be let in and calling out to him—his mom. It's his mom and he's at home. Right. Home.

" _Morty?_ "

"I-I'm okay," he calls out to her automatically. He shifts in place, testing his limbs. Nothing seems hurt. "I think I fell."

" _You 'think'?"_

He shuffles up into a sitting position, and immediately has to press his back against the bathtub when his head throbs and the room spins. That ache in his right eye is definitely very real. His hand fumbles up to his eye, but there's no thick liquidy substance there this time, blood or blue _something,_ just water dotting his face. "Yeah," he finally concludes. "Y-yeah, I fell. 'M okay though. J-just a little dizzy."

" _Open the door, Morty."_ She sounds stressed, worn-out.

Morty's quick to stumble his way over to the bathroom door, gripping at the toilet and sink along the way to keep his balance. His hand slips over the edge of the sink and into even more water, the stopper having been put in and the sink filled up to the brim… for whatever reason. Morty shakes his hand out, counts himself lucky that at least the faucet was turned off so that it didn't flood the place while he was out. He has to blink rapidly to keep the spots out of his eyes, and by the time he slumps against the doorframe, his mom starts to rattle at the knob again.

"H-hang on."

He flips open the lock, yawning and ruffling a hand through his hair, sending flecks of water flying, and he tries to adopt a nonchalant look on his face when his mom jerks the door open, because he may have fallen, yeah, but he really doesn't feel that bad. Just a little rattled. He's gone through much worse in the past than just a little spill, and he tries to demonstrate that now by waving a random hand in the air and smiling, as if to say _'See? Perfectly okay.'_

His mother seems to think otherwise though, if her startled wide-eyed look is any indication, and her hand snaps up to her mouth, covering a gasp. She crosses the few steps between them in an instant, nervous hands fluttering from his shoulders up to his face.

"Oh my god," she says, voice pitching high, "Morty, what did you do to your eye?"

His brow furrows in confusion, but as she prods gently around his right eye socket, that faint ache turns into a sharp stab of pain. He flinches back from her touch, twisting around in place to face the mirror and finally get a good look at himself. There's no eye patch, but then, he wasn't really expecting there to be one, his weird dream aside. There is, however, a vicious looking bruise circling his right eye. Black with shades of blue streaking over the bridge of his nose; his eyelid is puffy and his sclera is completely bloodshot.

"O-oh hell," he says, reaching up to the injury, hands hovering but not touching, "Oh jeez, I must have hi— when I fell I must have hit it agai-against something."

The sink faucet? Most likely. He's lucky he didn't drown himself or split his head open.

His mother's hands clasp down on his shoulders. Her grip is too hard. When he turns to look at her though, it's not anger on her face, but worry and concern in a way he doesn't think he's ever quite seen before.

"You were up again all night, weren't you?" she asks, and he can feel a slight tremble in her hands as her grip tightens further. "Doing school work?"

School work?

"Mom—"

"You can't keep doing that, Morty," she snaps, cutting him off. "Your dad and I are happy you're working so hard, but you need to sleep _normal hours._ Otherwise, you're going to do more than just fall and hurt yourself, you're going to make yourself _sick."_

He… he doesn't know what she's talking about. Sure, he's stayed up late or missed sleep altogether going on adventures with Rick in the past, but she's never been bothered by it before. Not after the first few times at least, and this isn't even _that._ She said… she said school work? He stayed up doing school work? That doesn't really sound like him, but maybe he was just catching up on a project after yet another set of adventures with Rick. That… that sounds accurate enough.

Oh jeez, he hopes he doesn't have a concussion. Can you even get a concussion getting hit in the eye? Maybe he should have her take him to the doctor, or—

No. No, it's fine. He can just have Rick take a quick look later. Use some science to make it all better, problem solved.

So he smiles at her, eases her hands off his shoulders and says, "I'm fine. R-r- _really_." She doesn't look convinced though, so he quickly adds on, "I just need—I'm gonna get ready for school a-an-and then I'll be right down."

It is a school day, isn't it? It has to be if he'd been working on school work the previous night. Despite his confusion though, the blanks in his memory, it seems to be the right thing to say, because his mom backs off a step, lets him pass by to go to his room. She doesn't follow him, but she doesn't look away either, and he ends up closing his bedroom door for some privacy. He only needs to wait by the door for a few seconds before he hears her heading back down the stairs.

Morty breathes out slowly and slumps back against the door, right on a wet spot on the back of his shirt. He grimaces at the sensation, and quickly peels off the sodden material, shucking off his pants for good measure too so that only his boxers remain. What had he even been doing last night? His room doesn't reveal much; it's even messier than usual, with papers and clothes and a bunch of other random shit strewn about.

School work though, his mom said he'd been doing school work, and as much as he doubts this—something about the explanation just doesn't feel right—it's the only real clue he has, so he stumbles his way over to his desk, kicking up papers and tripping over junk. Sure enough, there are folders stuffed full of papers and several stapled reports stacked on top. He shuffles through the reports briefly, but nothing rings a bell. Some kind of history report on a _Federation_ of some sort, a couple biology reports on various insects, an art class paper on color spectrum (he thinks?), and a report that only looks half-finished on… what? _Ultrasonic audio frequencies?_

"If th-there's gonna be tests on any of this shit, I'm d-definitely gonna fail."

Not knowing what he needs or doesn't need, he grabs it all and shoves it into his backpack. Skipping school for the day is sounding more and more appealing—he almost hopes Rick bursts in and drags him away on an adventure like usual. At the very least, he should see the man to get his head looked at before class, make sure nothing's wrong.

First though, he needs to make an appearance downstairs. He's not sure what's going on this time to make his mom look so stressed out, but he doesn't want to add to it. Grabbing some moderately clean-looking clothes off the floor and pulling them on, he makes his way downstairs, his backpack dragging behind him and one hand pressed up against the wall for balance, just in case the fading dizziness decides to come back with a vengeance and kick his ass.

His mom and Summer are the only ones in the kitchen, both seated at the table and picking at their breakfast. Neither one looks overly interested in the food, his mom staring off into the middle distance and Summer typing away at her phone, ignoring everything around her. A normal morning… sort of.

He pours himself a bowl of cereal, sits down at the table with them.

"Wow, mom wasn't kidding, you really killed you eye," Summer says, attention drawn away from her phone for a brief moment. "What'd you do, take a header into the doorknob?"

"Fff-faucet," he guesses.

She snaps a picture of his face and goes back to her phone, her interest gone. Seconds later her phone chimes a happy little beat.

He turns back to his cereal.

.

 _A plate of scrambled eggs sits before him, just a bit watery; he added too much milk. Still, he can't help but feel a little proud of them. He's getting better at this whole cooking thing, and if he keeps practicing, his skills will only improve. There's a new recipe he wants to try for dinner later. Simple but filling. Pretty soon they won't need to survive on take-out food alone._

" _Jesus, Morty," Rick grumbles, his fork scraping across the plate in a loud screeeech, "if you're gonna take this hh-OOHME-maker thing seriously, y-you gotta learn what spices are. This tas-tastes—this is bland as shit."_

 _He could take offence. He could stand up from the table and throw a fit, rant about how if Rick doesn't like it,_ _ **he**_ _can do the cooking from now on. Just throw Rick's plate and storm away. Things tend to be tense between them, so it certainly wouldn't be unexpected. Despite all Rick's complaints though, the older man always eats every last bite of whatever Morty cooks, and although he's complaining about the spices, he doesn't once mention that the eggs are too runny. He never does; never actually points out a real cooking mistake when Morty makes one._

 _Morty slides a bottle of hot sauce across the table. Rick catches it with a grin._

" _NooOOOww we're talking!"_

 _._

His arm hits the bowl of cereal when he jerks back, knocking it from the table and spilling it on the floor. Milk soaks into his socks, but he hardly notices. His mom and Summer are watching him, a mix of emotions on their face that he doesn't take the time to decipher. He eyes dart around the table, but it's just the three of them. No Rick. No runny scrambled eggs.

"What the _hell_ , Morty?" his sister snaps.

"I-uuuhhh… w-wh-where's Rick? I just remem—I, I, I need to talk to him."

It appears to be the wrong thing to say. Summer's looking at him like he's lost it, and his mom stands up from her chair, a look of clear concern on her face along with something else—a look of hurt, there and gone in a second. She has one hand out, starts walking around the table to him.

"Honey—"

He backs up before she can get too close. He doesn't know why, he just doesn't like the way she's looking at him—all overly concerned and careful, like he's a scared animal. It's not normal. It's not how anyone in his family looks at him. He blurts out quickly, "I'm-I—it's fine! I'll just go get him myself." And then he bolts for the garage, ignores his name being called out behind him.

Did Rick dump him in some alternate universe again, he wonders, or is this another experiment? Some chemical in the water? He vaguely remembers Rick mentioning something about aliens that kidnap you and stuff you in a shoddy virtual reality of your home, but he's pretty sure Rick blew all those aliens up, so… probably not very likely.

He slams open the door to the garage, his grandfather's name on the tip of his tongue—

And he stops, hands falling limp to his sides.

Because the garage is empty, completely stripped clean of anything that could have ever belonged to Rick. All that remains are some boxes marked _Christmas Decorations, Halloween Decorations, Garden Supplies, Morty's Room, Summer's Room—_ all _normal_ things one would usually find in their garage. His eyes dart to where the hatch to Rick's secret underground lab should be, but even that's been covered up by several oil-stained pieces of cardboard, ignored, like it was never there.

A hand comes down on his shoulder, but he pulls away, walks into the center of the mostly empty garage and paces in a circle, taking everything in. Something nags at him, some knowledge just out of grasp. He feels like… like this shouldn't be a surprise, like he should know what this all means. He does know, he _does,_ because this is all old news now, isn't it? But the answers slip through his fingers, and an ache pulses from his eye all the way to the back of his skull.

' _You're making a scene,'_ he tells himself. _'Stop it.'_

His attention snaps to the garage door as it rumbles and slowly starts to rise. Morning light filters in, bright and blinding, and the silhouette of a vehicle stands before him, the sound of an engine running. He steps towards it, one hand up to block the glare from his eyes, and he can't stop himself from calling out, "Rrrick?"

It's not his grandfather's ship though. The shape of the silhouette is all wrong, far too boxy and with no wings attached. The vehicle slowly pulls forward, a car, and as Morty's eyes adjust, he sees his dad sitting in the driver's seat. The garage door creeps the rest of the way up and Morty finds his gaze drawn past the car and outside… at a neighborhood that's no longer one he recognizes. Alien architecture looms high above Earth houses and streets, consuming everything that was once normal.

He remembers.

"Morty," his mom says, her tone dead, "your grandfather isn't here."

Yes, he knows. Rick is gone; hasn't been here for quite a while now. How long has it been? Seven months? Eight?

"Yeah, he ditched us, remember?" Summer says. "Abandoned us on that tiny planet to get picked up by the stup- the Federation."

Something inside him flares up at this remark, a feeling of protest—except it's true, isn't it? It all happened exactly as she said, he knows this.

And yet… something about it digs at him.

His dad steps out of the car, jumps into the conversation, "What about Rick?"

"I'm going to school," Morty says dully, and he turns back to the house to go grab his backpack.

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 _TBC for now!_

 _More chapters to come. Let me know what you think. :)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

School is not for smart people. That's what Rick said so long ago, when all the wild adventures first started. Morty thinks he probably could have argued against the point at the time, but now, under Earth's new world order thanks to the Galactic Federation, and the changes they put forth to every country's education system, it's a simply stated fact. School is _not_ for smart people. School is for all the average and below average rejects—which according to the Federation's standards, is most of the human population—to learn basic skills that will allow them to live out the rest of their mediocre, sheep-like lives.

Of course, they don't word it this way. Everything that comes out of those insectoid mouths is sugar-coated garbage, primped up to look appealing to the masses. A polished turd is still a turd though, and Morty's spent enough time in Rick's presence to see through all forms of bullshit.

Here's how it works.

IQ tests are given out regularly, each one tweaked to how old you are, and thus, what your intelligence level should be at. If you do well on that first test, you're given an even harder test, and a harder test after that if you continue to do well. Morty doesn't know how many tests you end up having to take, he's never made it past the first one, but at some point, the people who actually do well just sort of… vanish. One day they're three seats down from him, stressing about all the studying they've had to do for each test, and the next day they're gone—just stop showing up for school.

 _For higher education,_ the Federation says. _Those among you who are of an elite intellect are entitled to benefits—to a specialized training that meets their specific needs and skills. They will go on to be your leaders, your doctors, inventors, the best of the best in every field. They will make your planet into a better place and better-connect Earth to the galaxy around it._

 _You should be happy for their success. This is a good thing, and will only benefit you and everyone around you in the long run._

It's happening all over the world, Morty knows. He's checked into various internet forums talking about the subject. People are being tested—high-schoolers, college students, graduates, anyone with a degree or otherwise who wants to throw their hat in the ring and stop by a testing facility—and if they do well enough by the Federation's standards, they're _selected_ and then just… disappear.

No one quite knows what happens beyond that point, what 'higher education' entails. Sometimes a family member will claim that they heard from the person on the phone, and that they were quite happy. Other times, the Federation will release videos to the public of their 'specialized training facilities,' showing high-tech labs, classrooms, and workstations, all full of happy humans with their nose buried in a book or practicing some skill.

Morty's not sure if he buys it. It all seems too perfect and clean. Enough people believe in the cause though to keep trying, to keep going to those testing facilities.

As for the rest of them, well…

School is where the dumb go to learn now.

He can't say he knows how the college experience has been changed. Summer dropped out her first semester and wouldn't tell him about it. He hasn't cared to look more into it since then. As for high school though, the day is divided up into three sessions. With class starting at 8am every day, the first two hours cover every typical Earth subject squashed into one accelerated lesson; math, English, history, science and everything in-between.

After, everyone gets a ten-minute snack, then the next two hours are reserved for a Federation mandated lesson—or in other words, things the Federation believes it's important for you to know. Their laws, their monetary system, the hierarchy of their chain of command and government, their _glorious_ history and all the good they've done for the galaxy.

Lunch comes next, usually something pasta-related. Because of this, Morty makes a habit to pack his own lunch now, as do most of his classmates. He just can't stomach the taste anymore.

The last three hours are where things turn a bit more ' _cog in the machine learning its purpose.'_ A lot of his classmates just call it 'shop,' but, well, they tend to be the lucky ones who got assigned to something they actually like. Not Morty though, of course not Morty.

When that needle pierced his tongue, he hadn't even been aware of what the purpose of the test would be. Just a quick stab, and then the machine had buzzed and chimed and announced in monotone, _"You will be a good… HORTICULTURIST."_

" _W-what?"_ He'd stuttered.

" _It is another term for… GARDENER, or… FARMER,"_ the machine had clarified, not understanding the reason for his disbelief. " _You will be working with… PLANTS."_

And just like that, his future had been decided, with not a single regard for his likes or dislikes, or even one question about the type of thing he might actually enjoy doing for a living.

So as he steps off the bus and follows the mass of his classmates walking in through the front doors—his head feeling clear for the first time that morning—he knows instantly that the reports he grabbed off his desk are not for any of the three sessions he'll be attending that day or the next. Worksheets are handed out for each session—or the papers stuffed in the folders he also grabbed that morning—but anything as strenuous as a report? No, instructors were encouraged not to put too much stress on students' minds so that they may better focus on what they needed to learn in shop.

Which means he has several reports he doesn't know the origins of, several reports that he's getting a sense he should maybe not show anyone. He'll have to read them over more closely later in the moderate privacy of his own home, see what they say. It could be nothing. It could be something Summer typed up that accidentally got put in his room.

Morty doubts it's anything he had typed up himself—while he doesn't think of himself as stupid, despite what so many people have said to him in the past (Rick especially), what he'd skimmed through that morning did sound a bit too… wordy and intellectual to have been written by him.

There's no time to dwell on it now though; the warning bell rings for the first session of the day.

He ditches his third session half-way through. He just feels too antsy to stand around in the greenhouse any longer and sift his hands through whatever slimy alien soil they'd been working with that day—from the QuAAzz-Zork system he thinks, he wasn't really paying attention during the lecture.

One upside to being branded as a moron and therefore part of the reject pile is that after the first few months, his teachers stopped caring so much about how hard he tries or if he goes wandering off somewhere. Of course, he can't be blatantly disobedient, and if his teacher is part of the Federation (' _Bug-faces,'_ his classmates would whisper), he has to be extra careful.

Morty had noticed right from the start that Federation lackeys tended to keep a careful eye on him in-particular—compared to the general disregard they give the rest of his classmates. It's not hard to figure out why. Under Rick's guidance, Morty's done a number of illegal activities, including flat-out murder, and he's sure that every mark against him is reflected in his records. He thinks that the only thing really working in his favor is his age, that they see him as an impressionable young kid, taken advantage of by an elder relative. They don't seem to know of the things he did of his own volition. They watch him, sure, but that's all they do.

And the dumber he acts, the slower he talks, the less they watch him.

Third sessions are typically taught by the Federation—or at least his shop is, considering all the alien plants they work with—so usually it's not something he can skip. They have a sub teaching today though, and he (she? Morty can't really tell) doesn't seem to be much of a botanist. They also apparently hadn't been clued-in to Morty's previous history. He couldn't help but notice that those bug eyes didn't once wander his way, so a little over an hour into the session, he'd raised his dirt-caked hand and waved it wildly in the air, making up some excuse about needing to go water the plants in all the offices, halls, and classrooms.

"I-i-ii-if you don't w-wa-water them," he'd said, over-exaggerating his usual stutter, "th-they'll d-d-die."

One wide-eyed look later and all the faked emotions of an overly-concerned child, he was out of there with a hall pass in one hand and a watering can in the other.

He wanders the halls aimlessly at first, only stopping to pretend he's watering plants when he notices a bug-face watching him for a moment too long. The day's almost over with, and he's going to try and milk this for as long as he can. Eventually, he gets a moment's reprieve where the halls clear out and not a single eye is on him. He's quick to slip through a nearby door and down one of the less-traveled service halls.

That's another benefit of being in the reject pile. Because he's frequently sent out to do small menial tasks—watering plants, returning or fetching tools from other shops, delivering messages between teachers who are too busy to check their email—he's learned the layout of the school quite well, including all the places students shouldn't be going.

He passes through the back of _Electrical_ because he knows that they have a lecture right now and no one will be in the workshop area—then through a back room where all the circuit breakers are, and out a back door that he knows isn't alarmed during the day because one of the teachers smokes. Once he's outside, it's easy from there. He's well-acquainted with every tree and shrub on school property now, and knows all the best ones that'll hide him from prying eyes staring out the school's windows.

With no real destination in mind, Morty circles the safest areas of the building, just taking the time to enjoy the sun and the air, this small sense of freedom. If he keeps his eyes mostly down and away from certain directions around the school, he won't even see the alien architecture that's been added on, just the grass and the plants around him. He thinks maybe the whole horticulture thing wouldn't be so bad if he'd actually been given a choice in the matter.

He settles in a bush right next to one of the loading docks. It's massive in size with dark red leaves and it hugs right up against the school's brick walls. He feels like he should know the name of the plant's species by now, but he never took the time to learn. Never cared to. All that matters to him is that the branches inside have grown into a kind of bowl shape that makes for a good seat, as he had discovered a few months back, and that its location next to the loading dock is super convenient. Maintenance never locks the doors during the day because shipments are always coming and going. One quick hop over a metal railing and he can be back inside the school in an instant.

There's not usually much activity at the docks during this time of day, so when the door slams open quite suddenly, Morty just about has a heart-attack. He crouches down lower in his hiding place, being especially careful not to move or make any noise. Federation insectoids have extremely good hearing.

But it's not someone from the Federation, it's another student. Slender but curvy, long red hair—

Jessica?

She's carrying a- a radio, it looks like. A weird alien one. There are faint dark smudges on her fingers and shirt, so out of contrast with how she usually looks—in fact, he doesn't think he's ever seen her look this angry before. Her hands shake, fingers gripping white-knuckled at the radio, and she lifts it high above her head.

Morty stumbles out of the bush, one arm stretched out, "J-Jessica, wait!"

It's not that he thinks it would be a big deal if she broke the radio, but—damaging school property—he just doesn't think he trusts the Federation enough, not even with something as small as this.

She startles back a step.

"Morty? What were you doing in that bush?" she asks, the radio now held in front of her like a shield. When it seems that she finally gets a good look at him though, she startles back again, "Oh my god, _what did you do to your eye?_ "

"I-i-iit's fine. It's—I'm fine, just hurt it this morning," he says, shrugging, and sheepishly he adds, "Sorry for scaring you. I-I was just… hiding out, I guess. Seeing if I could mm-make it to the end of the last class—errr, _session_."

She seems to relax at that, says "Oh," like she completely understands. Seeing her with the radio, he thinks she probably does.

"W-what about you?" he asks. "Haven't—haven't seen you in a while. You're working with r-radios?"

She sighs, looking down at the boxy device in her hands, "Radio frequencies. Communications." She presses her lips into a thin line, "I'm a _call girl._ "

Morty nearly falls over, has to catch himself against the railing, "Uhhh, I-I-I don't think that's what that means."

"Whatever," she rolls her eyes. "I mean, I _know,_ I'm not stupid, despite what the Federation thinks of me." She grumbles that last part. "I'm pretty much the space equivalent of a telephone repair guy, or- or one of those 1-800 operators if I want to go that route. _'Call girl'_ is just what those Federation jerks like to snicker at us when they don't think we can hear."

"Oh," he says, and as a weak consolation, offers up, "Th-they call us mud-brats."

It's probably not as bad as 'call girl,' but it's the only thing he can think to say.

Jessica gives him a curious look, "Mud-brats? What'd you get stuck with?"

"Plants," he says, scratching a nervous hand at the back of his neck. He makes a makes a random gesture in the air, "Growing stuff."

"So you have a green thumb."

"I guess," he says, "Th-that's what they tell me. Sooooo… what are you doing out here? S-since you know what I was doing out here."

She heaves out a frustrated sigh, turns narrowed eyes back down to the radio in her hands, "I'm was _trying_ to get it to work right. Actually pick up a signal. When I asked if I could check other areas of the school, maybe pick up a stronger signal somewhere else, they just… _laughed_ and let me leave."

"Well, I-I-I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out."

He wishes he could give her more advice than that, but he really doesn't know anything about radios himself.

Advice doesn't seem like something Jessica's really interested in hearing either way though, because she makes some non-committal noise at his comment and goes to kneel down on the loading dock, grumbling about how she'll _figure it out right now_ as she sets the radio down rather forcefully and pries off the back of it.

Morty shifts in place, scratches at his arm. Watching her rearrange wires and pull tiny tools out of the purse she has slung over her back, he's not quite sure if he should stick around or just leave her to it. The conversation seems to be over, and substitute teacher or not, they've probably noticed that he's been gone for far too long now.

"So, ummm," he starts to say, but then she snaps the lid back on, flips a couple switches and…

Static.

She frowns.

"That's… better than before, r-right?" Morty says slowly, unsure.

She shushes him, starts to reach for the dials—

And then the sound of one of the much larger docking bay doors starts to rumble to life, metal grinding on metal as it slowly rises up from the ground. Morty stutters out an _'Oh shit'_ and Jessica gasps, hugging the radio to her chest. They really shouldn't be out here, hall-passes or not.

He tugs on her arm, back towards the railing, "Come on!"

It's a joint effort between them both, but they manage to scramble over the railing together and practically dive into the bush before the bay door opens up all the way. Hand on her wrist, Morty leads them far enough back into the bush so that he knows they won't be seen; he lets her have the branch seat while he crouches on the ground.

It's just Maintenance, but Maintenance from the Federation, so they still would have been in trouble had they been caught out here. The large insectoid creatures are wheeling out large plastic bins full of… something. Morty squints, and his eye aches in reminder.

"More books," Jessica whispers into his ear, and he realizes that she's right. Text books, library books, just stacks and stacks of books piled high in the bins. They'd been disappearing in large quantities for months now, and not just at school, but everywhere around town too. It was all replaced later of course, but with Federation approved books instead.

Minutes later, a truck backs up against the loading dock, loud and beeping. The aliens set to work dumping the books into the truck, and Jessica turns her attention back to the radio. She pulls a pair of earbuds out of her purse and plugs them in, fits one bud into her ear and starts fiddling with the knob again. She doesn't appear to be at all worried about the aliens hearing them over all the noise.

Morty spares her a quick glance, but turns his attention back to the truck. The aliens aren't speaking English, so he doesn't know what they're saying. Crackling, screeching, rumbling, it's just all nonsense to him. It only takes them about ten minutes to fill the truck up, tossing all the books in like so much trash.

One of the aliens hops into the front seat of the truck with the driver and the others go back inside. The bay door rumbles closed behind them. As the truck slowly pulls away, book covers in the back are blown open, their pages fanning out in the wind as the truck speeds up.

"Where do you think it all goes?" Morty asks, watching the vehicle disappear around a corner.

"Dunno," Jessica says with an absentminded shrug. Morty turns back to her, watching the way her hands fan out over the different knobs, twisting and turning. He jumps when she suddenly exclaims, a happy triumphant noise, and before he has a chance to comprehend what that means, she stuffs her spare earbud into his ear and says, "Listen!"

It's music.

Huh, she fixed it.

.

 _They have to fix it. They can't just stand by and do nothing._

 _That's the attitude everyone goes in with when they decide to attend the protest._

 _Morty doesn't really understand much of what's going on. "I'm only_ _ **this**_ _many years old," he'll say and hold out his hand when anyone asks. His antennae are only two inches tall after all and he still can't consciously blink his third eye yet, so it's understandable that the subject matter is a bit beyond his understanding. He knows his parents fight about it a lot; with each other, with the neighbors, with people at the grocery store. It seems like all everyone's doing these days is fighting._

 _Summer tried to explain it to him once, but her words started scaring him and his mom was quick to rush in; swoop him up in her arms and plop him down in front of the TV to watch cartoons._

 _They were letting him be a part of_ _ **it**_ _now though, whatever_ _ **it**_ _actually is. There was, of course, another fight about it between his parents the night before; words like 'too dangerous' and 'peaceful protest' being tossed back and forth. Eventually though, they reached an agreement._

 _It was history in the making, after all, and he needed to see it, they said, needed to be a part of it so that it would never happen again._

" _And we need to show all of them what we're fighting for," his mom had said, one hand ruffling through Morty's hair as she spoke to his dad, "We need to show them why this is important to us, why we won't back down."_

 _He's handed a glowstick from some passerby when they arrive on the scene, and Morty concludes very quickly that whatever this protest-thing is, he likes it. There are colorful signs, loud chanting. The energy is high in the air. He can't believe he's lucky enough to stay up past his bedtime to be here._

 _Eventually, more protestors come. They're all dressed in black. They have buggy red eyes, only two of them, but their antennae are just like his._

 _His mom picks him up, which is nice because he can see better now._

 _Morty pops one end of the glowstick into his mouth for safe-keeping. With his hand free, he waves at the new protestors._

 _The people at the front of the crowd walk up to greet the newcomers._

 _And then their heads are blow away in the wind like red dandelion fluff._

 _He only sees it for a second before he's jerked away, his mom turning and running. Screaming rings out behind him—except loud and fearful, not at all like the organized chanting from before._

 _His dad is running beside them, Summer clutched tightly in the man's arms. She's crying, sobs shaking her small frame as she buries her head in his shoulder. Tears begin to well up in Morty's eyes, but he doesn't understand why. More flecks of red blow by them, all around them, more people's heads wisp away in a mist._

 _Someone slams into his dad and knocks him back, the crowd flooding around them until Morty can't see the man anymore, can't hear Summer's cries. His mom pauses, hesitates. She twists in place and looks all around them, calling out for dad, for Summer._

 _Her head snaps to the side, and a red mist caresses the side of Morty's face._

 _They fall._

 _He hits the ground hard, his mother a heavy weight on top of him. She's not moving, and he can't get up. People race by them, stepping on his arm, his hand. Eventually, someone trips over them and his mother is knocked away. He turns to her, reaches out to her, his arms stretched across the ground, but half of her face is missing, and she's not getting up._

 _He cries as he runs away._

 _The night grows muted after that, screams fading into the distance. He makes it a full two blocks on his own before one of the bad protestors—who he now knows are monster in green and black—corners him by a set of dumpsters. It approaches him leisurely, its red eyes completely indifferent as it raises its weapon._

 _A_ _ **crack**_ _of green energy strikes it in the head, blasting straight through in a shower of black oil. The monster drops to the ground, pincer arms just inches away from Morty, but still and unmoving, just like his mom._

 _The oil black pools under the creature's body. He can't look away._

 _Bony thin arms wrap around him; an old man with wild hair and long, crooked antenna. He has dark, shadowed bags under all three eyes and a sour scent to his breath. He picks Morty up and holds him tight._

" _Sssssoookay, Morty," the man says. "S'okay, your grandpa Rick is here."_

 _Morty doesn't know the man, can hardly understand what's going on, but he finds himself clinging on to him, small fingers digging in to the man's stained white jacket._

" _I'mmm—Mmm' ssooorry I didn't come back sooner, Morty… So sorry…"_

 _._

Morty shuffles back quick, earbud yanked free. His arms flail out and grab at nearby branches, snapping one free from the bush. Jessica flinches back from him, drops the radio on the ground.

Heels digging into dirt and mulch, Morty's back hits the side of the school and he slumps against it, panting. His head throbs in protest, a brief spike of pain before it fades away, and he can't help but pat at his forehead, feeling for a third eye that isn't there.

"What was that?" Jessica asks, quick and fearful. "Did you just have like, some kind of seizure?"

"I-I don't know," he says.

He really doesn't know. The memories, visions, whatever they are, he doesn't know what it is, why it's happening.

"Was I shaking?" he asks.

"A little," Jessica says, "But not really. You just kind of zoned out for a minute there." She creeps closer, "That could still be a seizure though. You should see a doctor."

She sounds very adamant on this point, but Morty shakes his head, some feeling inside of him screaming _no. No, no, no, no—_

"No," he says.

Reassure, reassure _quick_.

"I-I-I'll be fine. It's—my mom knows about it," he lies, "We're taking care of it. It's fine."

She doesn't look convinced.

Morty swallows thickly.

"Please don't tell anyone."

Jessica purses her lips. Once upon a time, Morty would be gone on her just from that little move alone, the fact that she's giving his so much attention, but now his thoughts are too flooded with questions about what's happening to him, too distracted by everything going on in the world around him. He has no time, no energy left for things like romance and high school crushes.

She promises not to tell.

It's only a small relief in the grand scheme of things.

.

* * *

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Morty gets detention for his extra-long plant watering excursion. That's one thing that hasn't changed about the schooling system. The punishments themselves on the other hand—

There are two long benches set aside for him in the greenhouse, both of which are filled up with the same square plug trays he and his classmates had been packing soil into earlier. Morty can't do the math in his head, but with seventy-two cells in each tray, and what looks to be about twelve trays at each bench, that leaves for a whole lot of planting in his future. The task _itself_ isn't what makes the detention different—although the pea-sized seeds he has to plant in each cell are rather sharp and prickly and stab at his fingertips if he's not careful—it's the whole… automated lecture portion of the detention that gives it a rather unsettling vibe.

 _"Every position in the Federation is important, even the very small ones,"_ a calm female voice echoes mechanically out of the greenhouse speakers, like listening to Siri if she were on Xanax, _"Being a tiny part of the much bigger picture does not diminish your value or make you any less of a being."_

In other words, you may just be a tiny cog in the machine, but even tiny cogs have their purpose of turning a crank.

 _"That's why it's important to keep going, keep working."_

Morty pushes his thumb into slick soil, punching a hole into the center of a single cell. He carefully grabs one of the seeds from a jar filled with pink gel and drops it into the hole.

 _"When you are not working for the good of the Federation, you are working against society's forward momentum."_

He pushes more soil over on top of the seed and packs it down before moving onto the next one. It's slow, monotonous work, and the pink gel makes his hands itch and the pricks on his fingers sting, but it's not… terrible, and it's not like he's mindlessly falling for everything the recording keeps droning on about—it's just that… after the first hour or so, it kind of starts to dig at you.

Especially the interactive portions of the recording.

 _"Repeat after me: 'I am a small but important part of the Federation.'"_

Morty frowns, stabs his fingers into the next set of cells to make holes in the soil.

 _"You are not repeating. This is a necessary part of your education."_

Morty grits his teeth, glares down at the soil.

The recording repeats the statement, _"'I am a small but important part of the Federation.'"_

It won't stop if he doesn't do it, and then his detention will drag on a lot longer. He learned that the hard way the first time around.

"I am a small but important part of the Federation," he bites out.

 _"Very good,_ " the machine says, _"Repeat after me: 'I will not waste the Federation's valuable time.'"_

He grabs another seed from the jar, doesn't realize how tightly he's holding it until it pierces his fingers and draws blood, "I will not waste the Federation's valuable time."

 _"Good. 'I will participate in school and do my very best to be an asset to the Federation.'"_

Morty takes in a shaky breath, drops the bloody seed into the hole and packs soil over it.

 _"Was that too many words? To repeat: 'I will participate in—"_

"I will participate in school and do my very best to be an asset to the Federation," he says in one quick rush.

 _"Good."_

Four trays down, twenty to go. Morty reaches into the jar and swirls his hand around, watches the way red spreads like an inkblot in the pink gel.

 _"'I will not work against the Federation or society's forward momentum.'"_

He grabs a fistful of seeds, pulls his hand out in a quick flood of pink gel that drips itchy trails down his arm.

"I will not work against the Federation or society's forward momentum."

 _"Yes, very good."_

Morty squeezes the seeds tight until his palm fills up with warmth.

.

* * *

.

It's late when he gets home. The school always sends notice of detentions though, so his family isn't left wondering and waiting. Dinner has just barely started by the time he walks through the front door; there's a place already set out for him at the table. It's chicken with vegetables and rice, and a tall glass of milk that his mother slides over to him. Morty mumbles out a thanks and rubs his palms against his pant legs under the table. The bleeding has already stopped and he'd washed his hands at school before he left, so it doesn't look too terrible. Still, the wounds are clearly there, and he doesn't want his family to worry. He can only hope that his eye will distract them from anything else.

"So… detention again?" his mom says carefully, like she's not quite sure what tone to use. In the past, detention was something to be scolded, like he could have done better or acted differently so that it didn't happen. Now though, the whole subject just kind of… puts his parents on edge. Not every reason him or any other student gets detention these days is a good one.

"It was… deserved," Morty says slowly, averting his eyes with a shrug. "I pretty much skipped out on one of my sessions."

At that, his mom looks a bit more relaxed, but no less unhappy. His dad just looks disappointed. Summer is… on her phone again.

"School is important," his dad says, if a bit half-heartedly. Summer quietly scoffs and shoves a piece of chicken into her mouth, but dad ignores her. "Even if you don't like how it's taught, you still need to show up for every class… or session."

"Yeah okay," Morty says, mostly just to appease them, "I'll do better. Be a _valuable member of society_ and all."

The sound of Summer's chair scraping loudly against the tiles cuts him off before he can go any further. Morty's eyes dart up to see that she's pushed herself away from the table, her diner plate not even half-finished. She looks annoyed, but not so much directly at anyone as just irritated in general. She excuses herself quickly, says she has things she needs to do. Neither his mom nor his dad say anything, though they look like they want to.

With the attention off him though, Morty reaches for his plate, being sure to keep his hand partially curled and palm down so that he parents won't see even if they did look his way. Dinner is a quick and quiet affair after that, and Morty is the next one to excuse himself. The reports in his backpack are burning a hole in the back of his mind and he wants to look them over sooner rather than later.

As Morty hurries out of the kitchen though, he can't help but glance at the empty seat at the table where Rick would have been sitting. A brief twinge of pain pulses through his head as he thinks back on the strange visions he's had, and he wonders if somehow, impossibly, the reports are written by Rick. If… maybe somehow, all the strange things happening to him is due to Rick.

.

* * *

.

The reports are definitely intelligently written, but at the same time rambling in a way that's hard to follow. Morty's starting to think that maybe he should have grabbed a highlighter or a notebook to write down bullet-points from each page before he got settled in with reading it all.

Shifting restlessly in place, he straightens his back to get the crick out of it before hunching back over all the papers. There's not much to be said about comfort when cement is your cushioning, but his room ended up being too much of a disaster zone for him to focus in, and he wanted some place quiet where he wouldn't be bothered, so he set up camp in the garage.

It's a little cold, sure, and the lights occasionally flicker, but he knows Summer and his mom aren't likely to come wandering out this way, and his dad had left not too long ago for his night shift at the factory—plus Morty had moved all the boxes over to one corner of the garage and stacked them up to form a wall he could hide behind. It's perfect, really. No one can see him, and he doesn't have to see… the rest of the garage.

In truth, Morty hasn't been back in the garage very much since Rick left.

When his family had arrived back on Earth that day and managed to get a cab home, they pulled up to their house to the sight of Federation Officials packing up and stripping down the entire contents of the garage, even Rick's secret underground lab. They'd had to stand out on their lawn, a _safe distance away,_ until the Federation was done; could only watch as everything was torn down until all that was left was bare walls. The Federation had confiscated it all, citing it as possible evidence of Rick's terrorism (but of course his family was assured they wouldn't be held at all accountable for whatever may be found).

For months, Morty hadn't set foot in the room, and after that, it would only be for a good reason, such as now. He just… doesn't like seeing it all empty, as if nothing he and Rick had done, nothing they had worked on, had ever happened in the first place—as if Rick had never shown back up on their doorstep a few years back and allowed Morty the chance to get to know his grandfather.

He growls out a frustrated breath at his thoughts and presses his hands to his eyes, not even caring about the ache he causes in his right. Rick is gone. He'd left them behind, that's a fact, and Morty needs to stop thinking about it and focus on something important—like these reports for one, whether they were written by Rick or not.

The one about the Federation's history is easy enough to follow. Not all of the dates make sense to Morty—like Zeta-316.5 or GF-6837, whatever that could even be in relation to Earth time—but he gets the general gist of it. The report talks about everything the Federation's even done or been responsible for, a good chunk of it at the very least, and it's not the censored PC shit he's spoon-fed at school. Whoever wrote this report did not care one bit for the Federation and had no qualms about spilling all of their dirty little secrets.

Interstellar cover-ups, assassinations, brainwashing, planet-wide manipulation on a galactic scale—clearly something he wouldn't be surprised is happening here—torture, inter-species trafficking, inhumane experimentation, the list just goes on. It's all done in a carefully discrete way too, with many contingencies in place—but then, of course it'd have to be for the organization to be as powerful and successful as they are.

There's only so many terrible things Morty can read about though before he has to move on to the other reports. The ones about different insectoid species are a bit more complicated to read, but still something he can generally understand. The reports aren't written about any Earth-born insects like he'd originally thought that morning though, but rather about the various alien species most commonly in charge at the Galactic Federation.

The first half is written like your typical science paper on an animal species, going into body structure, internal organs, their various senses, strengths and weaknesses, habitat, food source, mating habits—it's more than Morty ever wanted to know about the aliens that have taken over his life. The second half is like an anthropology report, going into the different species' cultures, their societal structure, language, politics, religions. It all reads like something out of a National Geographic magazine.

The last two reports, he honestly can't make heads or tails of. The terminology is beyond his understanding, and while the subject matter of the first few reports he read is generally clear, Morty's really not sure what direction the writer is going with these last two. Maybe if he was at all artistic, he could figure out what the writer is trying to say with the color-spectrum paper—Morty didn't even know so many words could be written about color alone.

As for the paper on _ultrasonic audio frequencies?_ Morty has to look up some of those words to even understand the _title_ of the paper, let alone the contents of it—which isn't even all there. The report cuts off right in the middle of some unconcluded thought on the levels and ranges of sound.

In the end, while he _feels_ like it could all be important, none of it connects in his mind. The report about the Federation, and the ones about the various alien species running it, that makes sense. Know thy enemy, after all. Sound and color though? It seems completely out of left field, like it was just randomly thrown in there with the rest. Bitterly, Morty feels like maybe there could be some deeper meaning here and that he's just not smart enough to see it.

He slumps down against the wall, shuffles the reports into a single stack and flips through them page-by-page, like maybe that could help; look at it a different way, from a different angle, and see what sticks out. It's late though, and he knows he should go back inside—get ready for bed so that he's not so tired for school the next day. He wonders if maybe this is what he's been staying up doing the previous nights like his mom said, just reading through these papers that were probably Rick's and trying to get some meaning from them.

He gets to his feet, stretches out stiff limbs with a wide yawn—and that's when the door back inside slowly creaks open.

It's Summer, and it doesn't seem like she's out here to find him. In fact, she doesn't even notice him standing off in the corner. She's dressed differently than before, oddly all in dark colors with flecks of blue splattered throughout, and she has a backpack slung over one shoulder.

She looks in the direction all the boxes had been stacked in before Morty moved them, and a brief look of confusion flashes across her face when she sees they're not there.

"Summer?" he finally says, and she startles back, one hand to her chest.

" _Jesus_ , Morty!" she hisses, her voice pitched high, yet at the same time keeping quiet. "What are you doing out here? I thought you were in bed. _Asleep._ It's nearly one o'clock in the freakin' morning!"

Morty blinks in surprise. He hadn't realized how long he's been out here. For a moment, he wonders why his mom didn't come looking for him—but then, she probably saw his door mostly closed and his lights off and assumed he was sleeping like he _should have been_ and not sneaking out to the garage.

Giving him an irritated look, Summer storms over to the stacked boxes and fishes through one that has her name marked on it. She pulls something out of it too quickly for him to see and stuffs it into her backpack, and that's when it occurs to him that it's rather strange for her to be out here this late too.

"Go to bed!" she snaps at him, pulling that 'responsible big sister' tone that she hasn't used in years, which is also pretty suspicious in itself.

"What are _you_ doing out here?" he asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

"What? _Nothing,_ just getting some of _my_ stuff out of the garage. Sorry, is that a crime?" she says, defensive, and she immediately turns to leave, says one last time, " _Go to bed_."

He's quick to follow her. He's never let her off that easy in the past, and he's not about to start now. Plus, she's acting really strange, and he wants to know why. For a moment, it looks like she's headed for the kitchen, but she stops once they pass by the stairs and he keeps following her rather than heading up. She rounds on him immediately, body tense and hands fisted at her sides.

"Stop following me," she whispers at him, furious. "Just go to bed!"

Morty doesn't back down though, stands his ground and says, " _No._ T-t-tell me what's going on, w-what you're doing _right now,_ or I'm gonna go get mom."

She makes this quiet, frustrated snarling noise, shuts her eyes tight and fists one hand in her hair like she can't even _believe_ she has to deal with this. Finally, she throws her arms out and says, "Fine! I'm sneaking out, okay? Meeting up with some friends."

"Friends?" he echoes, and thinks to himself, ' _At this time of night? And what friends? All of her friends have graduated, they've all gone off to college, haven't they?'_

"Yes, alright?" she says, and she pulls back one of her dark sleeves to check a watch that isn't usually there. "Can I go now? Or are you going to rat me out to mom?"

He stares at her. The situation just seems a little off. Summer will lie to mom and dad and throw unauthorized parties, but Morty's never known her to sneak out like this. And now that the subject is really on his mind, he can't help but think about how… off she's been these past several weeks—ever since she dropped out of college and randomly showed up back home.

"Can I come with you?" he asks.

"What? No!" she snaps. "This isn't for you!"

He could let her go, leave her to make her own mistakes and go to bed himself—yet at the same time… he doesn't want her to leave without him. Something about the whole idea just sets him on edge, makes his palms sweat. He could threaten her with the mom-card again, force her to take him along, but in the end, when he opens his mouth, what comes out it:

"Summer, _please._ "

It's said as sincere as he's ever been with her.

When she doesn't immediately respond, he goes on to plead his case, but all he can do is fumble over his words, "Something about this, just—I-I-I- I dunno, i-it just—"

He just can't put the words together though, they won't come to him in a way that useful or even comprehensible. Her eyes dart down to her watch again, brow furrowed and lips pulled down into a frown.

"Uhhg, _fine!"_ she cuts him off, her eyes to the ceiling. When she looks back down at him though, her expression is deadly serious. "You don't tell Mom or Dad about this though, got it?"

He nods his head, "Y-yeah, of course."

Eyes narrowed, she watches him carefully, searching for something, but he doesn't know what. Finally, she says, "Okay, then go get dressed. _Quickly._ And dark colors, you're too bright."

He can't keep the smile from his face. This almost… feels like an adventure. He races up the stairs on light feet, being careful not to make any noise that could wake their mom.

Summer quietly hisses after him as he goes, "You better not slow me down tonight, Morty!"

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

The neighborhood is quiet and dark. Everyone is asleep as they should be at this hour, and Summer takes him on a winding route cutting through hedges and people's backyards. They avoid the streetlights, staying well out of sight in case anyone does happen to be up, or if a Federation patrol might fly by. It's not like there's an official curfew in place or anything, but two kids running around town this late at night is bound to raise some flags and draw unwanted Federation attention.

The further they get from home, the more Morty starts to think maybe he's in over his head here, maybe Summer is too, though she doesn't seem at all uneasy—yet at the same time, he can't find it in himself to regret going with her. Even if it turns out to be nothing interesting, one of Summer's dumb projects, this rush from sneaking out, of adventure and mystery, it's well worth it for that alone. He hadn't realized just how stale his life has gotten without Rick, a dull monotony between home and school.

Their destination ends up being the back of a grocery store where a car sits idling, exhaust rising up behind it in a fog. Morty can just barely make out the silhouette of two people sitting inside. The angles of their faces are faintly lit up from the cherry glow of a cigarette resting in the driver's mouth.

Summer heads straight over to the car at a brisk pace, but Morty hangs back a few steps, not quite sure what to make of the whole thing. Whoever they are, they definitely don't seem like the type of people Summer usually hangs out with. Are they people she met during her brief stint at college? Or was it after?

"Hey, hurry up!" she calls over to him in a quiet hiss, and without a single sign of hesitation, she opens the car's back door and slips inside. The two people in the front turn to her, and words are being exchanged, but Morty can't make out what. That's all that happens though; nothing bad or violent like the scene may have otherwise suggested, at least in Morty's overactive imagination.

He walks over to the car, probably more slowly and cautiously than is necessary at this point, and when he hesitates just outside the open back door, Summer glares up at him impatiently, so he climbs inside himself. The door has a rusty screech when he closes it, one that makes him wince considering how overly covert Summer's been this entire time.

There's a guy and a girl sitting in the front seat, and they both turn to look at him while he searches for a buckle that he quickly realizes isn't there—great. The girl's hair is buzzed short, and the guy's is grown out long. They certainly look college-aged like his sister. They also both happen to be wearing dark clothes as well, with the same splattered blue marks that Summer's clothes have on them.

"So you're the Sergeant's little brother then," the girl remarks, cigarette dangling from her lips.

"W-what?" he stammers, taken aback by the sudden title attached to his sister.

Summer groans, says, "That's _me,_ my title in this all—and don't act so surprised, I'm perfectly capable of accomplishing shit." And with that said, she turns to her… friends? Morty isn't sure—and, jerking a thumb over at Morty, she tells them, "No code name for him, alright? He's not involved, he's just tagging along."

"And why _do_ you want to 'tag along'?" the guy says, head titled to one side as he studies Morty with a laser-like focus.

"Uhhh, just… curious," Morty says, pressing his back up against torn leather seats.

The guy frowns at him, eyes narrowing further as he echoes, "Curious? Wanted to find out what your sister's up to?" He leans a bit further over his seat, closer to Morty, "Gather some information?"

"What?" Morty says, shoulders hunching up to his ears.

"Jeez, would you _relax,_ " Summer cuts in, pushing the guy back to the front. "He's fine, alright? Believe me, he'd never be working for _them._ "

"Just sayin' you can never be too sure," the guy says in his defense, speaking with rapid neurotic words. "Y'know the Nazis did it too, had family reporting each other—"

The girl in the driver's seat laughs and shakes her head, "What it is with you and Nazis?"

The guy's attention instantly snaps over to the girl, "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

In the rear-view mirror, Morty can see the girl roll her eyes, "And what's history going to say about an alien invasion?"

"Not much if we don't get going and _do this_ ," Summer cuts in heatedly, leaning forward in her seat to stare them both down.

Personally, it's strange seeing his sister act like this, the harsh look on her face, but it seems to do the trick of sobering up the atmosphere in the car. The girl flicks her cigarette out the window, puts the car into _drive_ and pulls away from the store. Summer settles back into her seat, looking calmer now that they're moving.

The guy in the front slides down in his seat in a hunch, arms crossed over his chest in a clearly defensive way, but it seems to be more in response to Morty coming along than to Summer snapping at the two. In fact, neither stranger looks at all put off by his older sister's attitude. It's almost like there's a kind of… respect there, in a way that Morty can't really comprehend.

"Don't mind Mr. Paranoid, by the way," the girl in the front says, breaking the silence, and Morty's attention is drawn away from his sister to see the driver occasionally glancing back at him through the rear-view mirror. Her eyes smile at him. "He just gets tense about this all. You can call me Tank, by the way, and he's Booga." She jerks her head briefly over at the guy sitting up front. "Don't tell us your name though. Calhoun says no code name for you, and we don't want to know who you really are."

"Calhoun?" Morty questions, his brow furrowed.

"The Sergeant back there," the girl, Tank, says. She sounds amused. "Your sister."

Morty turns his gaze on Summer, "Sergeant Calhoun?"

Why did that sound so…

"Wait," Morty says slowly, searching his brain before it clicks into place. "Like from Wreck-It-Ralph?"

The comparison doesn't match up in his head, of the older sister he grew up with and the tough videogame character from the movie. Summer gives him a long-suffering sigh when she notices his skeptical look.

"Cy-Bugs," is all she says, a sneer in her tone, and turns away from him, giving no further explanation than that.

Morty wants to question her further, find out what exactly this is all about—why they're here with these two random people, where they're going, why there's even a need for code names at all—but then Tank turns on the radio, flipping through a few random commercials and announcements, Federation shit that she quickly skips by, before finally settling on a station. The radio host welcomes their late-night audience and promises an hour of ' _commercial-free classic rock_ ,' and Tank gives a kind of interested hum as she turns up the volume.

Morty sighs and shifts his attention out the window at the passing scenery just as the first song starts. _Black Sabbath_ blares over the speakers.

.

 _He's ten when Rick gives him his first kit—a transparent lock with all its internal mechanisms shown clearly inside, and a set of all the right picks a beginner would need. It's a birthday present wrapped up in old newspaper, one his dad and step-mom severely disapprove of. It's only because Rick goes on a long, drunken rant about how Morty should know how to pick locks in case he's ever kidnapped—and the fact that Morty's parents want Rick to leave as soon as possible—that he's even allowed to keep the gift at all._

 _He practices picking the clear lock every chance he gets for the next two weeks before moving on to real locks._

 _The next time he gets to see Rick, he shows his grandfather what he's learned._

 _He'll never forget the proud look Rick gives him when he claps Morty on the shoulders and says, "Kid, you're a natural."_

 _._

Morty's face is pressed against glass and his limbs won't move, like sleep paralysis. He struggles to come up, one hand shifting against the seat, but only very slightly.

Faintly, he feels a hand rest against his shoulder and hears Summer's voice, "—told you that you should have gone to bed—"

There's quiet laughter from up front.

.

 _It's a cool fall day and he gets to stay at his grandfather's house for the weekend._

 _His dad and step-mom are never happy about him going away for these visits. They've never really seemed to like Rick, but it's an arrangement that's been agreed on, however reluctantly, for the past few years now—one that Morty insists on keeping whenever his parents start making noise about stopping it all._

 _In the past, Morty's never really understood their general dislike for the man. Grandpa Rick is **cool.** He lets Morty stay up late and watch the wildest TV shows that he can't see at home; his parents don't have the right cable package according to Rick. He gets to eat whatever junk food he wants, and if he wants to throw a party for his school friends, Rick's all for it. He'll even take Morty out on mini-adventures outside of the city. It's great. He always has fun with Grandpa Rick. _

_"Listen closely, Morty, because this is impOOORRtant. The first step to hotwiring a car is—"_

 _Of course, as Morty gets older, he begins to understand their unease a bit better._

 _"So you grab this wire here and—"_

 _At the same time though, he finds he doesn't care._

 _He likes all the things his grandfather's been teaching him._

 _It's **fun.**_

 **.**

There's drool on his face; the glass from the car window pressing his mouth open in such a way where he can't control the saliva pooling in his mouth. Morty swallows thickly, and he jerks one arm at his side with too much force, slamming it against the door he's leaning on. He can move, has control back when he wasn't expecting it. He sits upright jerkily and presses a fumbling palm to his face to wipe away the drool.

A hand grabs his forearm and Morty startles back against the door, his elbow colliding with the door handle and the armrest digging into his spine. He barely feels it though, his mind seeming to come down from some kind of frazzled buzz, too disconnected to really register the impact.

It takes him a moment to realize that the owner of the hand is his sister. She's staring at him with a pinched look on her face, brow furrowed and lips pressed together tightly in irritation.

"Come on, we're here," she says. "You butted into my business and came all this way, so you're _helping._ I don't care how tired you are."

The car isn't moving anymore. The front seat is empty. They're 'here,' right, but where is here?

Morty turns his gaze outside.

And he sees… books. Piles and piles of books.

 _'Where does it all go?' he'd asked Jessica the previous day._

"Where are we?" he says now, fumbling with the door handle. The rusty screech is just as loud opening the car door as it was closing it. Summer gets out on her side and circles around to him. He can't see Tank or Booga anywhere, but if he listens close enough, he can hear voices talking out of sight, somewhere among the mountainous heaps of books.

"We're at the city dump," Summer says as she sidles up next to him. Her hands tighten around the straps of her backpack as she too gazes out at all the books. "We have until sunrise before the incinerators come."

Morty turns to her, "Have until sunrise… to do what?"

She gives him a wry smile, "Preserve our culture, of course."

"What, like, s-save the books?" he asks in disbelief. "Just the four of us? There's got to be _thousands_ here and the car isn't that big!"

This time her smile is a bit more sincere, if not a touch roguish, "Who said it was just the four of us?"

Before Morty can really formulate a response to that, Summer slides her backpack to one arm and reaches inside to sift through the contents. What she ends up pulling out is a pair of ski-masks—not exactly surprising at this point considering what they're here for. Tossing one over to him, she pulls her own on and tells him to hurry up before turning on her heel and walking off in the direction of the voices. Morty drags his own ski-mask on over his head and scrambles to follow her.

As they round a particularly high mound of books, Morty spots Tank and Booga and sees that they're also hiding their faces, except with gas masks instead of ski-masks. The two seem to be in the process of pulling specific books out of a particularly large pile and forming a smaller pile with whatever they select. Tank absentmindedly waves at them over her shoulder as they approach.

"Remember," Summer says, crossing her arms over her chest, "He said we don't have time to be picky. We just need to get as much as we can."

"Yeah, yeah," Booga says with a backwards wave of his arm, "We're just making sure we get some good stuff before the crowd comes."

' _Crowd?'_ Morty wonders, ' _and who is 'he'?'_

The sudden rumble of approaching vehicles quickly answers one of those questions. For a split second, Morty's heart jumps into his throat and he worries that a Federation patrol had spotted them, but Summer and her friends don't appear at all worried or tense, so he forces himself to relax.

All around the heaps of books, both far off and close by from the sounds of it, cars and trucks and vans pull into sight and from them flood out a couple dozen people. Every single one of them is wearing dark clothes splattered with blue, and all of them quickly pull on a mask of some sort. Ski masks, gas masks, Halloween masks, theater masks and everything in-between—everyone's face is covered up before Morty even has a chance to blink and register who all of these people even are.

With a scattered but high-spirited cry from the crowd to get started, everyone bolts to the piles of books and starts gathering them up by the armfuls. Tank and Booga collect up their carefully selected books from before and race back in the direction of their car. Morty quickly loses sight of them when Summer grabs him by the forearm and leads him directly into the thick of it all.

It's all so very familiar, hitting the ground running like this when he doesn't even completely know the entire story. All those adventures with Rick have made him pretty good at thinking on his feet and adapting to whatever situation he's thrown in—and the situation here, the task at hand, is all pretty clear. Save as many books as they can. Like Summer said, preserve Earth's history, its culture.

Morty follows his sister's lead, grabbing as much as he can carry and bringing it over to the nearest vehicle. When that vehicle gets filled to the brim, with only enough space for the driver to safely operate it, they move on to whatever vehicle's next that still needs to be packed up and start helping out there. They dart from car to truck to van; a swarm of bees gathering up pollen. The entire time, Morty makes sure to keep his sister in sight as he races about, not wanting to lose her in the crowd. It's a bit difficult between the dark clothes and the mask she wears, but he recognizes her backpack enough to keep track, and the small bit of red hair peeking out at the base of her neck from under the mask.

He's not sure how long the whole thing takes, only that he's exhausted and his arms are aching by the time each vehicle is filled up. There's still quite a lot of books left. They aren't going to be able to save them all—that was clear from the start given the sheer amount the Federation had confiscated, but at the very least, they'd rescued a good chunk from all of the piles.

This time, when Morty watches all those books being driven away, each vehicle going off in a different direction, it's with a small sense of hope that he wonders where they're all going. Wherever that may be, it's a better fate than what the Federation had planned.

Summer rests a hand on his shoulder, and with her other hand, stifles a yawn.

"Come on," she says, "We should get home."

Morty turns to look at her, and then looks at the crowd of people still mingling around them, chatting amicably like this is just your regular social gathering. Everyone still lingering about had given up their seats for more space for books, including Morty and Summer themselves.

"Yeah, and how are we gonna get back?" Morty asks, but he has a pretty good feeling he already knows.

"That's the less exciting part of this all," Summer says with a tired laugh. "We walk."

Yes, that's what he figured—but again, just another part of the adventure. Not all of it is supposed to be fun or exciting, as he's learned over the years.

They break off from the crowd, a couple others following their lead. Some head in the same direction as them while others disappear off in the distance, towards wherever home may be. They keep their masks on for now, Summer telling him they'll take them off once they get far enough away.

They make it as far as the outer-edge of the town dump, where a chain-link fence with barbed wire spiraling along the top separates them from the streets outside.

And that's when a large spotlight shines down on them in a bright burst.

 _"Federation Patrol. You are under arrest."_

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

The description is clear in Morty's mind even now.

 _'They're gonna put the intergalactic equivalent of jumper cables under your nuts and/or labia and hook 'em up to an alien car battery until you tell them where I am.'_

He'd remembered it vividly when those Federation ships first pulled up to the tiny planet they'd been hiding out on, and as that spotlight shines down on them, he remembers it with an even deeper sense of fear now—but unlike before, Summer isn't crying or staring up at those ships in nervous apprehension. No, there's a steely look of determination in her eyes, so very reminiscent of Rick's when facing down his enemies on that wedding day so long ago. She always knew this would be a possibility. It's probably why she hadn't wanted Morty to come with her in the first place.

The hand she has wrapped around his wrist tightens, the only warning he gets before Summer pulls him to the right, bolting out from under the spotlight, which jerkily hurries to follow their path. They make a break for the fence, though Morty doesn't know why. They're likely to get caught before they even have a chance to scale it. Off in the corner of his eye, he sees several other spotlights combing through heaps of trash, tracking the silhouettes of their comrades as they scatter like mice.

 _"Halt!"_ the order comes from up high, echoing mechanically over the blare of hovering ship engines, " _Or we will be forced to shoot!"_

Morty stumbles over running feet and hesitates for a brief moment—because they don't have the security of Rick's intellect or his inventions this time—it's just Summer and him, and maybe surrendering is better than getting shot at over some books.

Summer doesn't pause for an instant though, her grip an iron band around his wrist as she drags him along, and in a matter of seconds, they nearly run head-on into the fence—except Summer is pulling back the chain-link in one spot, previously cut through and marked with blue spray-paint who knows how many days before. This entire operation, it's been planned out to the last detail—not just a random group of people getting together to steal back a bunch of books, but an organization with codenames and contingencies put together for all possible outcomes.

And his sister is a part of it all.

Breaking free from the town dump, they make a run for it across the street and toward the nearest cluster of buildings. Summer leads, seeming to know exactly where she's going, and the spotlight chases after them the entire time. The occasional sizzling blast of a laser echoes their footsteps, and Morty can only hope that the Federation has ' _phasers set to stun,'_ as the chance of getting hit seems inevitable at this point.

They almost make it to the sidewalk when there's the blare of a car horn and the screeching of brakes—the headlights coming right at them as blinding as the spotlight shining down from above, and for a moment, Morty thinks that this is it. Not shot-down by the Federation or even killed on a crazy adventure with Rick, but plowed down by some random car; just a smear on the pavement. He wonders what the Federation will tell their parents. He wonders if the news will eventually make its way back to Rick, wherever he is.

He wonders if Rick will use that replacement Morty coupon.

The _bang_ he hears is not the sound of their bodies colliding with the front bumper though, but rather of Summer's fists slamming against the hood of the car that had managed to stop just inches away from them. A number of screamed curses tear their way out of her throat, and Morty peels open tightly shut eyes he hadn't even realized he'd closed, his breath coming out of him in whooshing, panicked gasps as an adrenaline rush floods his system.

Summer tugs on his wrist to keep going, but he's frozen in place, his heart thudding rapidly in his chest and the sound of ship engines closing in. They're landing. The Federation must think they're surrendering, shocked into it by their close-call—and once again, Morty considers it. All they did was break into the dump and steal back some books. Was that really such a punishable offense?

The driver of the car throws open their door, irate and cursing about reckless hoods running into oncoming traffic. It's a man, spitting mad and feeling justified in his rage, seeing Summer and Morty as just two little brats on the wrong side of Federation law, the ski-masks they still wear damning them in his eyes as having done something illegal, something bad. The man approaches them with heavy purposeful steps, and there's that look on his face that Morty's been seeing more and more these days— _Benefit the Federation and the Federation will benefit you._

Morty backs up a step, nearly running into Summer. The man is so much taller than them, stronger—and at their backs, Morty can hear the mechanical whirr of hatch doors opening, the military stomping of clawed feet descending a ramp.

From the still-open door of the man's car blares the sudden strum of an electric guitar, a rather familiar song playing over the radio.

 _I'm an alligator,_

 _I'm a mama-papa comin' for you._

 _'Moonage Daydream,'_ Morty remembers faintly. _'Rick loves this song…'_

His legs fall out from under him.

.

 _Morty's fourteen when Rick lets him take part in his first real heist. It's a simple one as far as heists go, but as Rick's told him before, sometimes the simples ones are the best ones._

 _._

Gritting his teeth, Morty scrapes already cut palms raw against the pavement—because no, _no,_ he needs to stay present. Whatever the _fuck_ this is, it can't happen right now—

.

 _All Morty needs to do is play the part of the distraught lost child, and while everyone in the museum is distracted, Rick deactivates the alarm with the press of a button—his grandfather is a **genius** after all—and steals the crystals he needs for his latest project. Apparently they're great conductors. _

_._

Distantly, Morty registers Summer bolting past his hunched form, heading straight for the angry driver who's almost right on top of them. Pulling back one fist, she nails him right in the throat.

The driver goes down quick—

.

 _The plan goes off without a hitch. After all, Morty pulls off 'pathetic' like a true master, as Rick has told him in the past—using his small stature and wide doe-eyes so that they're a weapon instead of a shortcoming._

 _._

Summer's pulling at his arm, trying to drag him to his feet and shouting at him to get up, that they need to go _now—_

 _._

 _They're on their way out the front entrance, nearly home-free and smiling pretty for all the security cameras—and that's when Rick knocks over one of the display cases and sets off the museum's alarms._

 _On purpose._

 _His grandfather's smile is wide and manic, and it sends a thrill of excitement racing through Morty's heart._

 _"Moment of truth, kid," Rick tells him. "Time for you to show me everything you've learned."_

 _._

The words that leaves Morty's mouth are not his own, "Get in the car."

There's a disconnect between him and the rest of the world, like he's there but _not quite_ —five degrees to the left of reality, his brain floating on ice and static electricity percolating through his synapses.

Morty rises to his feet, body numb.

"What?" Summer says, and he realizes that by this point there are tears in her eyes, tears of anger and helpless frustration.

"Get in the car _now!_ " the command rips free from his throat unbidden, and he darts past her to the open driver's side door, his feet pounding against the pavement, yet he's walking on air.

Just as he pulls shut the driver's side door behind him, Summer's sliding into the passenger's seat and closes the door behind her as well. Outside, he's aware of orders being shouted at them over an intercom, but it all feels so far away, he can hardly even register what's being said, not when Rick's words are rumbling in his ear, the man's voice as gritty as Morty remembers it.

.

 _"What's the plan, MmmoOOORRty?"_

 _._

The keys are in the ignition, the car's already on.

"No need to waste time hotwiring," it floats out of his mouth, mumbled and absentminded. Summer says something to him, but he can't make out what, just puts the car into _drive_ and steps down on the gas, his hands gripping white-knuckled at the wheel. Immediately there's a _thump_ as the car rocks up and down briefly on the driver's side, and Summer smothers a gasp with one hand, her other stretched out and braced against the car dashboard.

 _You ran over that man,_ his mind tells him, _or at least his leg._

And he should be horrified, like he's _always_ horrified when he ends up unintentionally hurting someone on an adventure with Rick—Federation security when they broke through customs to smuggle in the seeds, all those gear people being destroyed in his misguided attempt to save _one life—_

Instead, the corner of his mouth twitches up into a smile, a kind of euphoria washing through him. He hears Rick's laughter buzzing through his head, loud and maniacal, and he has to force back a chuckling huff of his own that shakes through his chest.

Lasers shoot at the car and he jerks the wheel left and right, avoiding the worst shots and not letting up on the gas for an instant. From the corner of his eye, he sees Summer pressing herself back against the seat as tightly as she can, and shortly after, there's the click of her seatbelt, but he pays it no mind.

' _No time,'_ the thought drifts by, unconcerned.

 _No time._

 _No time._

 _No time._

A laser blast hits their windshield, causing a spider web of cracks to spread rapidly throughout the glass, and something inside of him snarls _lucky shot_ —except now he can hardly see, and Summer's gripping at his arm, telling him to _Stop, Morty. Pull over, Morty. This is too dangerous—_

But it's all drowned out by the sound of Rick's voice, spoken with both excitement and amusement.

.

 _"What now, Morty, huh? C-come on, what are you gonna do now, Mmmmoorty?"_

 _._

He knows, somehow Morty just _knows_ —the solution to the problem coming to him almost instantaneously—and his body moves automatically, his hands jerking the wheel to the left before he even fully has a chance to comprehend what he's doing. The tires screech along pavement, burning rubber as the car practically spins in place at the sudden change in direction, and he somehow expertly alternates between the breaks and the gas to keep control of the vehicle. Aiming the car directly at the first green blur he can make out through the glass, he shouts at Summer to _get down_ and plunges his foot back down on the gas, ducking down just a bit himself.

The car goes hurtling towards whatever unlucky Federation bastard Morty's selected to stand in their way, and just as he'd somehow unconsciously planned, the alien shoots at them and blasts out their front windshield, clearing his view of the street. Beside him from where she's curled over in her seat, her hands shielding her head, Summer screams out rapid curses and Morty can't stop the laughter from bursting out of his lungs, a numbing, helpless hysteria rising up in his chest as the Federation agent is forced to dive out of the way of their car or be flattened.

His hands turn the wheel again and they tear down the street, cutting across a corner so tight that they drive up and over the sidewalk and cut off another car as they pull back onto the road. Summer jerks upright in her seat, breathing heavy as she turns wide eyes on him, and she shouts at him—words that's he's sure have some meaning, yet very little of it makes its way through the fog of foreign emotions swelling up in him, thoughts that aren't his own. Enthusiasm and excitement smothering down his terror and fear, a frankly unhealthy love for this chase, for the adrenaline rush, and this sense of wanting to make Rick proud.

But Rick isn't here. He's not a part of any of this and should be the very last thing from Morty's mind, given the circumstances.

And yet Morty can't stop himself, can't stop these unknown emotions from twisting up his cognition, can't make himself pull over and stop driving. He's not in control, and for some reason some part of him is thrilled by it, laughs and says _yes, yes, yes._

He weaves in and out of what little traffic there is, occasionally shuts off his headlights and expertly cuts down dark side-streets. He's barley ever driven an actual car before, but somehow his body just knows what to do—there's muscle memory there that shouldn't be, shifting gears and turning the steering wheel like he's Mr. Fast-and-the-Fucking-Furious.

Overhead is the sound of multiple ship engines, probably all of the ones that had shown up at the town dump, likely seeing Summer and Morty as the best target to hunt down. Several spotlights trail a short distance behind them, bright beams cutting through the dark night and closing in on them fast.

Possible solutions race through Morty's mind, plans he never for a moment would have ever thought of before—insane, irrational plans of stealing alien weaponry to fight back or hijacking a ship to get the fuck off this planet, and somehow schematics flip through his mind like the pages of a book; blueprints of the best ship he could probably steal from the Federation, where all the trackers on the ship would be that he'd need to disable, how exactly he'd even go about hotwiring said ship—

Summer's arms come up past his chest, reaching over him, and Morty feels himself pulled back to the present just a bit, the wind whipping in their faces, the roar of the car engine and the ship engines above. Morty blinks wide, dry eyes, feels that manic smile start to crack along the edges and fade away when Summer grabs his seatbelt and buckles him in, so worried for his own safety even now.

What is he doing?

How long have they been driving?

Is Summer _still_ talking to him? Jesus, how long has she been doing that?

Morty's foot eases off the gas, the spotlights drawing nearer. The dread starts to seep in. What are they going to do? Exactly how much worse has he made this whole thing? The doubt and unease doesn't last long though, because out of the corner of his eye, Morty catches sight of the brightly lit sign for the 24/7 shopping district the Federation recently built for all the alien tourists, and he's suddenly flooded with that same rush of overconfidence and enthusiasm as his mind just screams _I have an **idea.**_

His foot slams down on the gas pedal one last time and he turns the wheel directly towards the shopping district, cutting across the parking lot and forcing pedestrians to jump out of the way. Beside him, Summer gasps, one arm automatically flying out to hit him against the chest and grip at his shirt, bracing them both—the 'mom arm,' they'd jokingly called it in the past.

Glass shatters around them and steel bends and breaks as they plow through one of the store's front entrances like a missile, taking out displays and shelving, crushing their way through several aisles. He's aware of the screaming, the panicked cries from both aliens and humans alike, but it's like seeing it all on a tv show—distant and unreal, not something to be affected by.

The car crashes to a final halt and Morty's head hits the steering wheel, the seatbelt practically knocking the wind out of him, but he can only imagine what he would have been like without it. Probably dead. Slowly dragging up his head, Morty peers up over the steering wheel at the chaos around him, the chaos he caused. They're well into the store by now, having cleaved a pretty far path inside.

' _For books.'_

He laughs, choked and brief and—oh, it hurts.

.

 _As they're flying away from the planet, crystals packed up in a paper bag and thrown into the backseat of their stolen ship, Rick ruffles a hand through Morty's hair and says, "Nice job, kid."_

 _._

The radio sputters out to static and dies.

Summer groans next to him, pulling herself upright.

Dust and debris lingers in the air like a thick smoke, and a kind of shocked stillness has settled over the store, a ringing silence—or maybe that's just the ringing in his ears.

Morty shudders and flops back in his seat, sucking in a shaking breath through grit teeth as his head pulses with pain and nausea wells up in his stomach. He swallows thickly, a metallic warmth sliding down his throat, and he realizes that he probably bit his tongue—not that that really ranks up high on his list of current problems. In his peripheral, he sees Summer struggling out of the passenger's side door, and it takes a moment for his mind to catch up and remember that they're not nearly out of the woods yet, that the Federation is probably just outside the wreckage.

He… slowly follows suit, unbuckling himself—has to force his door open, pushing against broken shelving and goods. Around them, the store is beginning to stir back to life, people and aliens picking themselves up and trying to make sense of what happened, assess any injuries.

Swinging his legs over the side of his seat, Morty attempts to stand—and immediately has to sit back down when his vision spins and bile rises up in the back of his throat. He hunches over his legs, but the sudden movement is a bad idea and after a couple quick breaths, Morty arches further over and throws up all over his shoes. His head throbs in protest and he runs shaky hands through his hair, his body breaking out in a cold sweat,

Summer's hand rests down on his shoulder and he finds himself leaning into the pressure. With careful but quick movements, because they really don't have the time, she pulls him to his feet and stands slightly hunched herself so that he can drape one arm over her shoulder for support. Wrapping her own arm around his waist to further steady him, they shuffle through the store slowly and then pick it up to a brisk pace once they're clear of the worst of the debris. A couple eyes follow their path, but everyone is either too stunned or too busy helping the injured to go after them; they're just civilians themselves after all, not police but a bunch of tourists. Most of them probably don't even realize what the ski-masks mean.

They leave through the store's back-entrance, directly into the heart of the shopping district. It's very much like a mall, all indoors with different stores lined up side-by side and sky-lights high above, except much more expansive and with cobbled streets instead of halls, large enough for both foot traffic, bicycles, and pulled carts, with a variety of trees and plants growing directly out of the ground.

Morty's been here once or twice before, so he knows the place always tends to be fairly crowded, the perfect place to disappear in when someone's looking for you. There's a number of aliens lingering just outside the store they destroyed, peering inside and wondering what happened. Summer walks them into the crowd mostly unnoticed, their dark clothes and masks hiding any blood that Morty knows has to be there; he can feel wet fabric clinging to him in some places.

They make it past several stores undisturbed, his steps growing more painful and shuffling and Summer having to support more of his weight—when a Federation announcement blares out over the district's intercoms. It's a warning to be on the look-out for two fugitives, followed by the exact description of the dark clothes they're wearing, and instructions to alert security, but to not approach them, as they are ' _dangerous'_ and ' _possibly armed.'_ The announcement is repeated several more times in various alien languages.

Summer quickly picks up their pace, but it's not very long at all before eyes start turning their way and the nervous chatter begins, claws and fingers and tentacles pointing in their direction. Summer's arm tightens around his waist, and she murmurs under her breath that they need to make a quick exit. She urges him to move faster, and he _tries_ , but…

They pass by a nearby tea shop, and classical music trickles teasingly out its open doors—violins accompanied by cellos and trumpets and flutes—and god, he doesn't understand it, but it's just too much. Pain shooting through his head like electricity, he leans more and more heavily against Summer's side until he finally drops to his knees, and his body just kind of… gives out… flops forward…

.

 _He doesn't know his age when Rick finds him. He doesn't know very much about himself at all, or what exists outside these metal walls he's lived his whole life behind—if you could even call it much of a life. For so very long, he's alone, and he's never known why—not until Rick melts a door to freedom through those walls and shows him the starlight._

 _His name is Morty. He never knew that either._

 _._

They're running, Morty's faintly aware of that, but he doesn't understand how. He can't move after all, can hardly feel his body, and his arms hang limp over Summer's shoulders, swaying with speedy footfalls.

Summer's carrying him.

His head flops uselessly against her neck. They quickly pass by another store, a Hot Topic, with angsty punk-rock blaring out of it. His eyes roll back into his head, because _fuck,_ it's the music—

.

 _His prom date ditches him half-way through the night, so he heads home early. He tells himself that he didn't really want to go anyway, so it's not that big of a deal. When Rick finds him on the couch later sulking, he laughs at Morty and calls him a loser._

 _Then he takes Morty to some kind of space rave dance club. They stay far past what would be the late hours of the morning by Earth standards. Rick orders him several hard drinks throughout the night that make his head buzz in a pleasant way, and they dance with the crowd and Morty makes out with a number of different aliens. He even sometimes dances with Rick specifically, the two of them laughing loud and drunkenly over the music._

 _It's one of the best nights of his life._

 _._

—the trigger for the hallucinations is music.

A peppy pop song plays out from Forever 21 and Morty shivers against his sister's back, grinds down chattering teeth. Summer ducks down a small hallway marked for _'Employees Only.'_

 _._

 _She's working on a mix for her 'Digitizing World Music' class—combining swing with a beat that's a bit more modern in a way that she hopes is pleasing to the ears, maybe even gain her some attention from her classmates for once. It's been tough, tougher than she thought it would be, but she's determined to prove that she can do it, that she's not too young to be attending college._

 _When the knock comes on her dorm door, Rick is the very last person she expects to see standing there. She is kinda glad he showed up though. She's been feeling pretty home-sick even though it's only been a few months._

 _She asks him how he handled going to college so early, just a curiously prodding tone, but Rick sees right through her in an instant. He throws an arm over her shoulder, tells her that you just need to keep working at it, for **yourself** , and fuck what anyone else might think or say. _

_"—because Moira, Mmmmoooira, you're a fucking music **prodigy.** Th-the best of the best outta alllll the other yous out there in the uuUUUNNNiverse. Don't ever think otherwise. Y-your grandpa was a hit r-rock star, Moira, so believe me, I know what I'm talking about."_

 _._

Summer's pushing open some kind of back exit door that leads out into a narrow alleyway where all the dumpsters are, and Morty feels like he's losing his fucking mind. His arms twitch involuntarily and he groans, tries to push himself up from Summer's back at least a little bit, but can't even really manage that much.

"Morty?" she whispers to him, checking.

"A-are they close?" he slurs.

"Yeah," she says, racing them both over to the dumpsters. She stops at the third one in, hefts him up higher on her back and says, "Come on, we gotta hurry. Can you help?"

He lifts one arm up, slow and shaking, straining; his hand hangs limp even as he flops the useless appendage over the dumpster's steel edge. He wants to ask her if maybe this is too obvious a hiding spot, or make some comment about how they've ended up in a trash heap twice tonight because of her, but he's just so tired, he can't get the words out.

Summer has to do most of the work. Distantly, Morty's surprised by how strong she is, that she manages to lift him up off her back and over the lip of the dumpster with very little help on his part. Once he's over the edge, he kind of just lets himself pool in among the trash bags and goes limp. Summer's backpack is tossed in next to him—she'd probably taken it off before when she needed to carry him—and she climbs into the dumpster herself shortly after. Morty starts to ask her what the plan is, the question coming out in a stuttered slur, but she quietly shushes him and starts digging through her backpack.

She pulls out a blanket, one as dark as their clothes it looks like, and she quickly shakes it out. He watches her silhouette in curious confusion as she slowly lowers the dumpster lid down above them, but makes no further attempts at asking questions, not even when Summer curls up next to him and lays the blanket out over them both, covering them completely.

He shuts his eyes and waits, decides to just accept whatever happens from this point on. He's too tired and aching to do much else.

Only a few minutes go by before the door they left through bangs open, and the sound of who knows how many Federation officials flood out into the alley. They quickly fan out in all directions, and just as Morty suspected, a few of them start checking the dumpsters. Just several feet away from them, clawed hands bang against metal sides and plastic lids are thrown open as they check the first dumpster, and then the second dumpster, and suddenly the Federation's right on top of them, looming over their hiding place.

But Summer doesn't move, so neither does Morty.

The lid is thrown open and Morty holds his breath.

There's a pause, a stretch of silence, and then a grunt of irritation from their potential captor. The lid is slammed back down over them before the alien moves on, checking every other dumpster after their own.

Summer grabs his hand and holds on tight.

Slowly the alley clears out and the Federation leaves. The sound of ship engines in still audible, but it gradually grows fainter in the distance. Morty shifts, starts to move, but Summer squeezes at his hand and whispers to him, _"Not yet,"_ so he settles back in.

They lie there for a long time—long after the sound of patrol ships have faded to silence.

And Morty keeps his eyes shut and focuses on the pain so that he doesn't have to think about the hallucinations—doesn't have to think about how they make his eyes wet or how they make him wish Rick was still around.

Morty exhales slowly.

Jesus.

* * *

 _TBC_

 _(Note: This is also crossposted on my AO3)_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

.

The rest of the night floats by in bits and pieces—Summer's phone lighting up the inside of the dumpster, the quiet murmur of her voice in Morty's ear as a cockroach climbs up his neck—

Arms reaching down to pick him up, carrying him. They're too thick to belong to his sister, too many muscles. A man. A man he doesn't know is carrying him—

He's lying down in the backseat of a car, his head pillowed on Summer's lap. There's a woman in the front passenger's seat leaning over the center console towards them. Her hands wrap around his wrist, taking his pulse. The car starts and the radio plays out a slow beat, and Morty's breath hitches in his throat. He turns to bury his face against his sister's stomach.

The hallucination this time is fleeting.

.

 _Rick's hand is a cool relief against his forehead, pushing sweaty bangs out of Morty's eyes._

 _"No feeling so hot there, huh kid?"_

 _He shivers despite the fever, rasps out a confirming groan that sends him into a coughing fit. Rick pulls the blankets up tighter around his chin._

 _"Yeeeaaaah, alien germs are a bitch, Morty."_

 _._

If Summer notices the tears soaking her shirt, she doesn't say anything—or at least she doesn't for the short amount of time he's conscious after that…

.

* * *

.

Morty's never been hung over before, but he thinks this must be what it feels like. A barbed ice pick trying to wriggle its way through your grey matter and push out of the back of your skull—like a tiny raptor punching a hole through its eggshell to breathe air for the first time. He turns his head to one side and regrets it.

His body aches in that familiar way that speaks of an adventure gone wrong; scattered stinging flecks biting randomly into his flesh, a stiff neck, and a dull band of pain stretching diagonally across his chest. In a kind of fucked up way, it brings back feelings of nostalgia for his grandfather—crazy, wacky adventures that, yeah, sometimes resulted in injury, but hadn't it been fun? Hadn't it been fucking _awesome?_

' _Rick's not here though,'_ he has to remind himself. _'He didn't suddenly come back, and this particular screw-up is all on Summer and me…'_

Bleary eyes peel open and blink unevenly at several stacks of magazines that had been pushed together and turned into a kind of precarious nightstand; Times, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Reader's Digest. A piece of plywood rests on top of them along with a bare-bulb lamp and an open first aid kit. Morty's eyes slowly rove around the room, taking in his surroundings—the hundreds of books stacked up against water-stained walls, wooden floors that have seen better days, and a dirty, misshapen mattress that he'd really rather not be lying on.

 _'Is that a blood stain?'_

He shuts his eyes. Christ.

"He's awake," a voice says, faint over the throbbing in his head. Morty goes tense at this sudden other presence being in the room—and sitting right next to him he realizes with a startled breath as they rest a hand down on his shoulder. He tries to flinch away, but can't quite manage it, and the voice says, "You're okay."

Footsteps circle around the mattress, a second person that he hadn't realized was there, and Morty forces his eyes open again when they kneel down next to him.

It's Summer. There are bandages on her face and neck, and circles of exhaustion under her eyes, but otherwise she looks alright, if not a little exasperated with him—or just the situation in general, he can't really tell.

Morty exhales, his body automatically relaxing. He doesn't know where he is and his memories of how he got here are fuzzy at best, but if Summer's here, then things can't be too bad off. He reaches one hand out, feeling ridiculous even as he does so but does it anyway, and he grabs onto his sister's sleeve, focusing on the fabric against his curled fingers. Summer sighs and takes his hand, and the world seems to solidify around him, become more real; it's childish, the perfect moment for her to tease him, but she doesn't say anything and he doesn't let go.

"Where are we?" he asks.

"Somewhere safe," Summer says, purposely vague. "I called some friends after you passed out and they picked us up."

"Friends…" Morty echoes, "Or more of this… _group_ you're a p-part of?"

Summer purses her lips but says nothing, so Morty turns his attention to the person sitting on the mattress next to him. It's a woman, middle-aged, with smile lines framing her eyes and mouth—a complete contrast to the dull, dead-eyed look on her face, like nothing in the world matters. She's busy looking over a bandage on his arm of what must have been a pretty big cut, but as soon as she notices him looking her way, she pulls out a penlight and shines it in his eyes, checking his pupil response he thinks. It hurts like a motherfucker, but she seems satisfied with the results, and immediately moves onto cognitive questions. What year is it, what month, what day of the week, who the President is, what the last thing he remembers is—things like that. It's all coolly clinical, and he guesses that she must have medical training of some sort; a doctor or a nurse most likely.

He notices that she doesn't ask for his name though, just like the two people they'd met up with last night hadn't wanted to know his name.

"S-s-so what's your codename?" Morty asks, going out on a limb, and he figures if the woman isn't a part of Summer's group, whatever it is, he can blame the strange question on his head injury.

It seems he guessed right though, because she doesn't even hesitate when she says, "They call me House." She shrugs, "I don't really see the comparison. I'm not an addict and I don't have a limp."

The way she speaks about it makes her seem entirely too… not _old_ in the physical sense, but just too mature mentally to be in a place like this. She doesn't match up with the wild, college-aged group Morty saw at the dump however many hours ago—doesn't seem like the kind of irresponsible adult to go along with such a thing, and Morty can't help but wonder how many others there are like her that are involved in all of this. How big does it all exactly go?

The woman, _House,_ has him sit up, and once the dizziness fades and he doesn't immediately pass out, she starts talking to Summer. _He'll be fine,_ she says. _It doesn't look like he has a concussion, but you should still keep an eye on him for the next week just to be safe._

She speaks like he's not there, a small child without a voice of his own. Sit there quietly and let the adults do the talking. Try not to let your brain dribble out of your ears or have any more psychotic breaks where you steal a car and lead a high-speed chase—

His mind drifts. Are they seizures, he wonders, can seizures be caused by music like they can be by flashing lights? Is that all this is? Just a regular, if not a little bit rare, human medical condition?

And since when did Summer become his keeper?

Sergeant Calhoun in charge of her troops—and apparently her messed-up little brother too.

Doctor House leaves, no limp in her step, true to her words, and then it's just Summer and himself, alone save for several hundred books and whatever parasites are likely living in this mattress he's still sitting on. Summer drops his hand, presses her palms to her eyes and sighs. Morty still wants to know more about this group she's involved with, and where exactly they are aside from just ' _someplace safe',_ but his sister doesn't seem interested in sharing and they should probably be heading back home by this point anyway. He doesn't know what time it is, how many hours have passed and if he's close to being late for school or not; there are no windows or clocks in this room to give him an idea of the time.

Summer laughs when he brings this point up, a short hysterical _HA,_ and says, "Oh, no way are you going to school today."

He starts to protest—not that he even really wants to go to school, but he's already on the Federation's radar and if he turns up missing the day after a bunch of radicals loot the town dump for books and then some crazy kids steal a car and crashes it into the shopping district, well, that could look suspicious—but then Summer glares up at him through her fingers, gives him this _look_ , and suddenly it's like he'd five again.

Five and stupid and trying to run out into the street to save some dumb animal. He can't even remember now what kind of animal it had been; a bird with an injured wing or a squirrel with broken legs, just flopping around out there on the pavement, and he'd seen it and wanted to _save it,_ and had gone running right over to it without even looking.

Morty wonders if he's forever destined to have close encounters with cars, like maybe that's how he's going to eventually bite it and Death is just giving the scenario a couple test-runs before the grand finale.

It had only been because Summer had pulled him out of the way that he'd avoided getting hit that first time around. She'd pulled him back violently and they'd tripped backwards over the sidewalk and scraped their palms and watched as the squirrel or bird was flattened a second later be the oncoming car.

Morty had cried. He'd never seen anything die before that moment.

And Summer had just stared out at the red smear of guts on the pavement, probably envisioning him in that animal's place, and when she turned to him it was with this look like she couldn't _believe_ he made her worry that much—like she's so angry she could almost push him back out in front of the car herself.

That's how she looks at him now; concern and worry mixed together with disbelief and rage.

"I would so _hit_ you right now if you didn't already look so fucking pathetic," she snaps, hands thrown in the air. She laughs again, this time mocking, "Really, Morty, _school?_ You know what I had to call and tell mom last night when I knew we wouldn't make it back home in time?"

Their parents. He'd completely forgotten about that rather large factor, what they must be thinking when they find both their children gone. Dad would want to call the police and Mom would be too worried to—she's been especially wary of any authority figures in their lives ever since the Federation took over.

"Oh, j-jeez, what?" Morty asks, afraid to know the answer.

Summer gives him a wry smile, says, "I told her that I snuck out to a party and you tagged along, then got completely shit-faced, and fell straight through a glass table. Congratulations, she's super worried."

" _W-what?_ Why would you tell her that?" he squawks.

"Yeah, what was I thinking," she says sarcastically, folding her arms across her chest, "Should have just told her that you crashed a car through a store-front."

"Y-y-you could have just told her I tripped and fell into the table," he says, "You didn't have to add the drunk part!"

He buries his face in his hands with a groan, and all the tacky little cuts speckling his face like freckles tickle against his palms, too tiny to need an actual bandage. Morty can admit that this isn't exactly something he can _hide_ from his parents. If he rubs his hands against them hard enough, he can probably open them all back up again; paint his face in red sigils. It's not like he _wants_ to hide them is the thing, he just doesn't want his parents to worry.

Especially his mom… He doesn't even think she'll ground him for something like this.

Two months after Rick left, Morty had found one of the man's lab coats down in the basement wedged between the washer and dryer; the only thing left behind that the Federation hadn't taken. He'd brought it up to his bedroom and stuffed it in his closet. Three days later, he'd tried it on. The thing had been too big, with the sleeves pooling over his hands and the coattails nearly reaching his ankles, and as he stood in front of the mirror and frowned, purposely ruffling up his hair, that's when his mom had walked in on him.

The look on her face is not one he'd like to see a repeat of—though he thinks he might accomplish just that with this latest drunken bender excuse Summer came up with…

The worst part of that whole lab coat story is that his mom had let Morty keep it even though she clearly wanted it for herself—and he _did_ keep it. He could have insisted that she take it, tell her that it wasn't that important to him. He didn't though, couldn't make himself say the words, couldn't make himself let go.

He's such a shit-head.

But then, Summer is too for coming up with that story.

Just two shit-headed fuckups. Rick should be so proud, his grandkids honoring his broken legacy.

Morty's nails bite into his face, and for a moment there, he actually does want to rub his hands against the cuts hard enough to open them back up.

Summer grabs his wrists and pulls his hands away. The irritated look is gone, replaced now with worry. Morty drops his gaze to the ground so that he doesn't have to look at it.

"What's going on with you?" she asks, leaning down to try and catch his eyes. "You've been acting really off for a while now."

"Off how?" he asks dully, not even really interested in the answer at this point despite the fact that up until a day ago, he doesn't remember anything about how he could have been acting—given all that's happened in the past twenty-four hours, it doesn't seem all that important now.

"I dunno," Summer says with a shrug. "Strange? Distant?"

She trails off.

He doesn't miss the fact that it's his own worries he'd had about her being reflected back at him. He supposes they've all been acting a bit different since returning to Earth. The way she looks at him now though makes it seem like it's been more than just that— _'strange'_ doesn't even begin to cover what's been going on with him since he woke up yesterday morning.

"' _Crazy'_ , right?" Morty says, using the word he knows she's thinking but won't say.

"A little," she admits, and he laughs.

"A l-little? No, total nut-job _crazy._ Y-you don't need to downplay it for me."

He says it jokingly. He's trying to make her laugh, put her at ease despite his words. _Look the other way,_ because there is no man behind the curtain, certainly not an insane one pulling all the levers at exactly the wrong moment.

It doesn't work.

She asks him why—just one little word and yet there's so much weight and meaning being carried in it. _Why_ is he's acting so loony-toons at times? Why, Morty? Tell me please. What makes a person do what he did? What makes a person think stealing a car and crashing it into the side of a building is a good thing? What is going on with him that's causing all the zoning out and the zombie-eyed stares, followed by such a rapid shift in personality, laughing as he leads a Federation patrol fleet on a wild chase around town? Why and what and how?

And the answer is that he doesn't have a fucking clue.

He can tell her, he knows, about his symptoms. His memory loss. The strange visions that he's almost sure at this point have a musical trigger, and the effect those visions are having on him—blacking out, disassociation, a loss of control over his own body. He can tell her about all of this and let her help him, let them figure this out together.

He doesn't tell her.

He wants to.

But he opens his mouth and excuses and lies flow out instead—he's tired and overwhelmed from school. He hasn't been getting enough sleep. Stealing the car was just a heat of the moment thing, and he panicked and acted without thinking. He's _sorry._

At least that last one is true…

Morty tells himself he'll be fine. He'll figure it out on his own and deal with it. No need to worry Summer or anyone else in his family.

He doesn't _need_ any help.

He only wants it… but wants and needs are two different things…

 _Let me out…_

 _Let me out…_

 _This is not a dance…_

There's a brief knock on the door to the run-down little room they're holed up in and a man walks in a moment later, one who immediately draws Summer's attention away from their conversation, and Morty's not sure whether to be relieved or not. She quickly rises to her feet to face the man, her stance sturdy and her head held up high.

"Tyler," she says, and follows it right up with a tense, _"Sir."_

Morty's stunned. He doesn't think he's ever heard his sister call someone 'sir' before—but then her eyes flick back in Morty's direction and for a second, she almost looks guilty. The look is gone before he can really process it though, replaced by a more familiar stubbornness as her gaze shifts back to the man. The entire thing makes Morty's proverbial hackles rise for reasons he doesn't quite understand, and he can't help but give the man, this _Tyler_ _,_ a suspicious once-over himself.

The guy's tall and holds himself confidently, and while not intimidatingly buff or overly muscular, he is wiry and clearly has some strength. He has dark hair that's short and messy and he's sporting a five o'clock shadow and a previously broken nose that clearly didn't set right. He looks gruff, mean, the kind of person Morty would normally try to steer clear of.

"Calhoun," Tyler says, and his voice is… surprisingly calm and easy-going. "Been hearin' some interesting stories about you and some brother of yours."

"Probably all exaggerations," Summer says stiffly.

"Don't think someone can exaggerate what you two did last night," Tyler says with a wide grin, and he chuckles and shakes his head. He walks further into the room at a leisurely pace, bypasses Summer completely and comes to a stop right in front of Morty. He holds out one hand, knuckles bloodied and bruised, and says, "Suppose I owe you some thanks, kid. Your batshit crazy scheme made sure no one got caught last night."

Morty stares up at the hand, hesitant, and briefly he looks over at Summer for direction. She's standing half turned away from them though, a tight frown on her face and her arms crossed over her chest, and Morty can't tell if that means she's annoyed with him personally or if she just doesn't like this Tyler person talking to him. Or maybe both. From the start, she made it clear that she didn't want him involved in all this, won't even give him enough clues as to what _this_ even is, and now here Morty is being offered the hand of someone she calls ' _Sir,'_ someone who makes her stand up straight and tense, a man who walks with purpose and confidence, whose codename isn't something big or extravagant—Tank, Booga, House, Sergeant Calhoun, all standing at attention to… Tyler. Sir, yes sir, _Tyler._

Tyler smiles down at him, and Morty finds himself taking the man's hand—probably against all better judgement—and is pulled to his feet an instant later. Blinking his eyes rapidly to push the brief surge of vertigo away, Morty sways but quickly regains his footing, and he relaxes his hand in Tyler's grip, mumbles a _thanks_ and goes to pull away—

But Tyler doesn't let go.

If anything, his hand tightens around Morty's, and his head tilts slightly to the side as he stares Morty down, blue eyes locked with brown, searching for who knows what. The smile is gone from the man's face, replaced with a calculating look, one that sends a shiver of apprehension up Morty's spine, and he suddenly wishes he were anywhere but here.

Summer takes a rather forceful step towards them, some kind of protest clearly on the tip of her tongue, when Tyler quickly lets go, the smile back on his face as he says, "Huh, interesting." And then he continues, as if the entire strange occurrence hadn't happened, with the offer of, "Ya know, we could certainly use someone like you—"

" _No,"_ Summer jumps in immediately, and they both turn to look at her. Her hands are fisted down at her sides, shaking just so slightly as she says, "He's not getting involved with this. Especially not after tonight."

When she looks at him, she only sees his injuries and the fact that he got them all while under her watch—her little brother who was hurt just by going along with her on this one mission—never mind the fact that all of these injuries were caused by his own actions. He almost wants to argue against her choice, and why she even gets to make it for him in the first place, but as fucking _exhilarating_ as this whole thing has been, Morty finds that he can't exactly disagree with her. Not because of his injuries though, but because he knows what she doesn't—that there's something wrong with him, something that makes it entirely too dangerous for him to be joining such an organization. After all, how can he be at all reliable when he's likely to just drop to the ground and black out at any moment because of something as simple as a song?

He's a liability and he knows it.

Just… fucking useless. Not even Rick would want to drag his deadweight along through the multiverse in this kind of condition.

And sure enough, Tyler doesn't seem at all interested in fighting the point. Morty would probably just be another foot soldier to him, with plenty more behind him to fill the space.

"Your call, Calhoun," the man says with a shrug, "Who am I to get in the way of family?"

Whatever interest he had in Morty or the conversation seems to be gone, and Tyler dismisses them with a wave of his hand, tells them they should probably head home, and that if Morty's not _in,_ then he's an outsider and Summer should treat him like one. It's a throwaway comment as they both head out the door, but it's one that makes Summer stand a little bit closer to Morty as she leads him down a hallway.

The rest of the building is as old and decrepit as the room he woke up in, with peeling paint and holes in the walls, and floorboards that looked half rotted through covered up by stained throw rugs. Most of the rooms they pass by are missing doors, and dozens of people swarm up and down the hallways, walking in and out of various rooms with books piled up in their arms. They all stop and stare as Summer leads him past, a variety of expressions on their faces; curiosity, appreciation, amusement, and in some cases a sense of unease.

And then someone familiar emerges from one of the rooms—Booga—and he immediately throws one arm over Morty's shoulder with a loud laugh, much more accepting this time around when he says, "Hee-eeey! Look who it is, _Ender's Game,_ you crazy nut job! That was some plan you came up with, _seriously,_ whole new respect for you, my friend."

Some people standing around them laugh. A few of them even clap, cheering ' _Yeah, Ender's Game!'_

Summer rounds on them all, a furious expression on her face that quickly puts an end to it. With just one stare, people advert their eyes while others turn to leave, their shoulders hunched up to their ears. Morty even finds himself shrinking back from her, and any feelings of flustered appreciation at all the positive attention dries up in an instant.

She pushes Booga away, her hand wrapping around Morty's upper arm to draw him back to her side as she says, "No, _no codename!_ Okay? He's not getting involved!"

"Yeah, sure," Booga says, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "Totally your call, but if he's not joining, he, uh… he can't stay here."

Yes, Tyler, whoever he is, has made that clear. Summer's _entire demeanor_ has made that clear. Whatever it is that they have planned—because there's no way this is just about rescuing books—it's a covert operation and anyone not involved is not welcome. Morty's not even surprised at the blindfold they make him wear as he leaves, or their terse instructions to not take it off until they have him back home. They even have him lie down in the back seat of whatever car they lead him out to, and Morty's too tired to really argue against it. Summer sits up front with some unknown driver.

Thankfully though, they keep the radio off when he asks.

.

* * *

.

Video footage of their car chase is playing on the news when they get home, and their mom is sitting on the couch watching the entire thing with a hand cupped over her mouth. She turns to them as soon as the front door closes behind them—and there it is, that look on her face from before that he so wanted to avoid. Morty almost wants to go running upstairs to his room to get away from it, but he's pretty sure he'd only trip and fall if he attempted such a thing at this point.

For a few tense seconds, she just stares at them, her eyes clearly getting wet with suppressed tears.

And then she laughs, completely overwhelmed and partly hysterical.

"Guess I should start giving you some driving lessons, huh?" she says, looking to Morty, and then she gets up from the couch and walks over to hug them both. It's done gingerly, like she's afraid she might hurt them further if she holds on too tight.

Were someone to photograph this very moment in time, they'd title it ' _World's Worst Children.'_

"We won't tell your father about this, he'd just worry too much," she gives another watery laugh, "We'll just tell him the glass table excuse."

The two shittiest shitheads to ever fuck up.

Morty was right.

She doesn't yell at them once.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

 **.**

The bruise is a red and purple band stretching diagonally across his chest, his sash of honor, proof that he wore a seatbelt, if only thanks to Summer. Dad doesn't know about that one since there 'technically' was no car accident—or rather _crash,_ because can it really be called an accident when it was done on purpose? The bruise across his forehead though, a horizontal smudge of dark blues from where he hit the steering wheel, that's one he can't hide. Summer and Mom tell Dad the mark is from hitting the frame of the glass table when he fell through it, and the man easily accepts the answer as truth, along with all the tiny little cuts marking up his face.

As for how Summer got cut up, because that needs to be explained too, apparently Morty's dumb ass dragged Summer down onto the table with him when he fell—which isn't that far from the truth, he supposes…

.

Wake up. It's 6AM and his mom is shaking his shoulder, saying _Morty, honey, get up. Sit up for me._

She asks him cognitive questions, because the problem with a head injury, even when a doctor says it's not a concussion, is that for those first twenty-four hours, your family worries that you might just slip off into a coma anyway or suffer a brain aneurism or something. It's always the worst case scenario, especially when you're a member of the Smith family.

He only half opens his eyes, determined to not completely wake up, and tells his mom, _Y-yeah, yeah, it's Thursday. My name is Morty Smith. I'm fifteen years old and the pr-president of the United States doesn't fucking matter now that the Federation is—is in charge of everything._

 _Please,_ he doesn't tell her, _Let me sleep. I'm… I'm so tired._

When he dreams, it's so completely random and meaningless compared to his waking hallucinations that he could cry with relief—he's submerging his hands into boxes full of gooey clouds, smiling at the colors spreading out from his fingertips and tickling his palms. He's gliding through a store on a scooter, one of those non-electric ones you push with your feet, and he's pulling snacks off the shelves he passes by, eating them without paying, the consequences be damned—

 _Wake up_. It's 8AM and he should be at school, but like Summer said before, that's just not an option for him. Not with him looking the way he does.

Morty rolls over and lets out a long-suffering sigh.

All absences from school and work must be verified now with official paperwork. There is no calling out because you're having an off day anymore, per the Federation's new productivity and education laws. If you're sick or your kid is sick, you need a doctor's note, official office letterhead and all. If someone dies, you need a death certificate. Car broke down? Either call a cab or show up the next day with a receipt from the tow-truck driver. Mugged or got in an accident or your house burned down? Better have that police or fire report ready.

And yes, the Federation will be calling whatever phone number is on your paperwork to verify your story. That task alone provided thousands of new jobs for the unemployed. Humanity should be thankful.

 _My name is Morty Smith, y-you can stop asking, I'm fine. You're my m-m-mom, your name is Beth and you're a horse heart surgeon. D-don't you have work today?_

Unions were the first ones to protest the change, and any other lower or middle class workers quickly joined them. The rich weren't all that concerned. They could easily pay off a doctor to write them a note.

The protests lasted about a month and then fizzled out as old news—too many people trying to take charge of it at once, any overall demands getting lost in the shuffle, the message became blurred. Others grew complacent with the change, their rage fizzled out and replaced with the acceptance that the Federation's too big and they're too small to actually make a difference. And was the change really that bad? So they couldn't skip out on work to go see a movie, so what?

Dealers line their jackets now with forged doctors notes and any other kind of official paperwork to meet your absentee needs; an entire black market phone network set up to verify the Federation's calls. It's become more lucrative than selling drugs. Morty knows of at least three alleyways he can go to to get one.

Summer takes care of that particular detail though with one quick call on her cellphone, says she'll pick the letter up later on in the day. Courtesy of her group, Morty's sure, though he doesn't say anything.

WAKE UP.

It's 10AM, and he doesn't think he's felt more tired in his life. His dad's sitting on the edge of his bed, one hand on Morty's arm; Mom must have gone to work after all. Dad keeps the questions brief, thank god, and then asks if Morty wants to come down for breakfast.

"Yeah, y-yeah, sure."

He pushes himself up, and his body just… _Jesus,_ he does not want to be conscious.

But he's up, the kind of awake where you're tired but your eyes are open so wide they might just roll out of your head, just—he's fucking _up_ , so yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, might as well get some breakfast. Sure. Bring it on.

The plate of pancakes set in front of him is about the last thing Morty wants to see, especially if it's his dad who made them. Mom's pretty good at cooking, but his dad not so much, especially when it comes to making pancakes. He never leaves them on the griddle long enough and the center is always still wet with batter. Morty's committed though, he already said yes and his dad is watching him with this look on his face—like he's worried about Morty, but at least he was able to do something helpful and make his son breakfast.

Morty glances over at Summer, who apparently had the foresight to decline their dad's offer from the start and is eating a bowl of cereal instead. She swipes through her phone disinterestedly in between spoonfuls of milk and Cheerios, and while the cuts on her face aren't too bad, just the sight of them is enough to make Morty look away with a twinge of guilt in his gut. A part of him wants to justify his actions last night, but the truth is, if he hadn't frozen up and then completely _lost it,_ Summer probably could have gotten them out of there without injury. She'd seemed to know what she was doing and where she was going at the time.

Morty grabs his fork and the bottle of syrup with a mental sigh and pours a glob of syrup over his pancakes, digging in for his first hesitant bite. He's right, it is in fact very wet in the pancake's center, like cutting into a pocket of lukewarm cream except more terrible. The batter slides slick across his tongue and down his throat—but with the syrup, it's at least tolerable. Upending the syrup bottle, he squeezes and floods his plate of pancakes completely. Summer makes a quiet disgusted noise that Morty ignores and their dad just laughs awkwardly and asks if he'd ' _like some more pancakes with his syrup'_ , which makes Summer groan again.

Just another regular morning, his dad making lame jokes and Summer grumbling about every little thing that bugs her—with Mom off at work for her morning-to-afternoon shift, and at some point, Dad will head off to bed, black-out curtains drawn shut so that he can catch up on the sleep he missed because of his overnight job. When dinner will eventually roll around, Mom will be back home and Dad will be up and all four of them will sit down together for dinner. Talk about their day, ask about school, about work, about what Summer's been up to—like they're a fucking Norman Rockwell painting and everything's _oh so very_ _normal;_ mother and father and brother and sister, the way it's been for over half a year now.

No void, no missing piece, just an empty chair at the table—so smile for the cameras, folks, you're picture perfect!

The bottle makes an obscene noise as it empties out, kind of summing up Morty's thoughts on that subject perfectly, and as he stares down at his nearly overflowing plate, he wonders if maybe he should switch to a spoon. The pancakes are practically soup now, saturated spongy pieces floating around in congealing tree sap. He doesn't even need to chew the soggy bites, just lets it pretty much dissolve against his tongue and swallows it down—and before he knows it, the plate is empty and he's holding it up and tipping it towards his mouth to slurp down whatever pooling syrup remains.

His dad clears his throat and Morty's eyes dart up to see that both he and Summer are watching him; Summer with a look of disgust and Dad with a worried frown.

" _Gross,"_ Summer mutters, her lip curled up.

"Well, uh," Dad forces a laugh, "That's _one_ way to get your calorie intake…I guess. Maybe I could make you some toast too?"

Morty looks down and drags his finger across his plate, drawing random doodles in the sticky brown residue coating its surface, "Th-that's alright. I'm good."

Which is honestly true. Even though anyone else would probably be feeling like throwing up at this point, he feels fine, or as fine as someone can feel after being involved in a car crash. Morty pops the sticky digit into his mouth and can only guess that he probably has a stomach of steel now after all the alien food he's tried in his travels.

His dad seems to have another theory though.

"This isn't some new hangover cure is it?"

Morty stills, his eyes shooting up—not to his dad, but to Summer. He knew they were using the glass table story, but he can't _believe_ they still went with the drunk part of it. Jesus, he's surprised his dad doesn't sound angry or annoyed by it. In fact, he wonders why the man hasn't lectured him yet. Does he really look so pathetic that he's getting a pass on this all?

Summer kicks him under the table, snapping Morty out of his incredulous stare, and he jerks his gaze over to his dad instead, blurting out an excuse before he can fully think it through, "I d-didn't know there was alcohol in it—the drinks."

Dad raises an eyebrow, makes an _Mmm-hmm_ noise, and Morty can only hope whatever explanation he fumbles through next will at least sort of match up with whatever Mom and Summer told him.

"Y-yeah, uh," Morty struggles to continue, trying to think back on what he actually knows about alcohol, which, despite Rick, isn't very much. "It was in red party cups, so I-I-I probably should've known, right? B-but it just tasted really sweet, so I kept drinking."

"Sex on the beach," Summer says, calm and disinterested, her eyes back down on her phone.

" _W-what?_ " Morty stammers, and almost follows it up with ' _I did not!'_ but Summer interrupts him before he can.

"That was the drink," she says, as if the answer should be obvious. "Reddish-orange? It's really fruity so you can't taste the vodka. You're also a total lightweight if you get drunk off it."

Morty stares at her, bites out a tense, "Yes. _That._ "

Luckily, Dad rescues them both from this potentially disastrous conversation—in the way only a dad can. His hands raised up in a placating gesture, he says, "Hey now, I'm not mad, alright? I was your age once too, I know what it's like." He chuckles, probably reminiscing. "Did a lot of crazy stunts myself back in the day."

Morty can practically hear Rick's voice now, _'Like getting my daughter pre-EEEHHG-gnant at seventeen?'_

"Anyway, from the way I remember it," Dad continues, "Doing something like falling through a glass table is the perfect one-step recovery program for quitting alcohol. You only need to do it once."

Unconsciously, Morty runs his fingers down his face, across the smattering of tiny scabs, feeling all the bumps and ridges, and half-heartedly he agrees, if only to appease his father at the very least, "Yeah, of- of course. Never again."

Dad seems satisfied by the answer, picking up his fork to start back in on his own breakfast. In between bites of runny pancakes that he doesn't seem at all bothered by, he comments, "You really _have_ done quite a number on yourself these past few days though. Especially your eye. Y'know, I probably have an eyepatch somewhere—"

" _No,_ " Morty blurts out, pushing his chair back so fast he almost knocks it over. This time, there's no music when the image flashes quick across his mind, staring in the mirror at himself, completely emotionless, an eyepatch bound over his reflection's right eye, just like that other Morty. Rapidly blinking back to the present, to reality, Morty stands up and pushes his chair in, "No, uh, no, that's alright. _T-totally_ not necessary."

"Yeah, Dad," Summer says, rolling her eyes, "Pirates are _so_ 2007."

Morty makes a quick escape, throwing back the rather weak excuse of needing to do school work and maybe getting some more rest afterwards as he leaves. He pretends not to hear his dad's concerned voice calling after him, or the disappointed sigh that follows when he doesn't respond.

.

* * *

.

The answers are surprisingly easy to find with a quick Google search, a mystery solved in a matter of minutes, and suddenly Morty's life is disappointingly dull and normal again, or at least 'normal' by Earth standards in relation to human afflictions. It isn't some delayed plot of Rick's, a work of scientific genius, and he is no special snowflake—no ' _chosen one'_ gaining some otherworldly power that will assist him in all his unspoken goals in life, helping him achieve some form of greatness—just an average human being whose life sucks just a little bit more because of a completely ordinary human condition.

Morty stares down at the padlock in his hand and can't help but feel... a little disappointed. Like, Christ, he actually thought this all might _be_ something—and he's such a fucking moron, why is he even surprised that the truth of it all is lackluster?

 _You are your father's children._

Musiogenic seizures, or a type of epilepsy where your seizures are triggered by music. It's an actual thing, and it usually results in 'complex partial seizures,' which, when he looked it up, pretty accurately fits the description of what he's going though. Seizures without convulsions, blank empty stares, and meaningless random behavior. It'd be possible for him to still speak, but his words wouldn't make sense—dazed and confused and unable to process the world around him.

He watches videos posted on YouTube—a man who wanders aimlessly around his kitchen, mumbling a quiet conversation to himself, a woman who slowly pulls the clothes out of her dresser drawer and tries to fit her pillows inside instead, a little boy staring blankly up at the camera and shrugs after his mom calmly asks him several times what his name is. Video after video, the same theme is repeated, blank staring, fumbling confused movements, nonsense conversations, it all matches up so closely to his own situation.

Even the hallucinations can be explained away. Seizures can cause them, as a video of one man showed quite clearly, when he came out of the seizure and talked about how he thought he was at a concert and his wife was reaching out to the band on the stage.

In one article about musiogenic seizures, it had explained how in some cases, it's not the music itself that's causing the seizures, but rather the emotions one feels when they hear certain kinds of music. So far _every_ kind of music has been effecting him, but it's all been resulting in hallucinations of a life with Rick still around. Is it possible that music in general just makes him think of his grandfather, which leads to his hallucinations focusing on Rick?

Morty's fingers clench tightly around the padlock, tiny metal ridges marking lines into his palm, but try as he might, he can't open it. It's not even that he doesn't have a proper pick kit, he's sure someone with true skills could do it with some hairpins, the knowledge just isn't there. He looks at it and doesn't see what he did in his hallucination, something about shifting pins inside, a clear image in his mind about the inner-workings of the lock.

For as vivid as it had all seemed, none of it had been real, and maybe just driving around Rick's spaceship, frequently escaping some form of authority chasing them down, had been enough experience for him to be able to drive the way he did last night.

He reads dozens more sites on epilepsy, on seizures, looking for some discrepancy, but it all comes back the same, the details matching up far too close for comfort. It would even explain his incident in the bathroom. Seizures can make you drop to the ground, a puppet with its strings cut—and in his case, take a header right into the sink faucet.

Any anger or abandonment he feels about Rick leaving almost seems pointless now. Even if Rick did decide to stick around after the fact, there's no way Morty would be able to go on anymore adventures with him if seizures became a constantly looming problem.

He tries not to think about how Rick would have likely come up with some solution for the whole thing, because none of that matters now. Rick is gone so there won't be any instantaneous cure—just many ongoing doctors' appointments and hospital visits for a normal human problem.

And this is exactly the point where a _normal_ human would be proactive in getting help and go talk to their family about what's been going on.

Instead, Morty locks his bedroom door, sets his phone up to record, and pulls up a playlist on his computer.

 _"You're as dumb as they come, Morty,"_ Rick had once said, and would continue to say in any roundabout way that he could.

At the same time though, Rick would be flipping normality the middle finger and telling it to fuck off.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

 **.**

The red pinpricks on his hands are the first thing you see in the video, bloody little pockmarks decorating his fingers and palms, fuzzy and close-up as his hands grab the phone and adjusts the recording's positioning so that the room is centered just right.

He is a mentally sound individual who's making all the right decisions, can't you just tell by the pair of wide brown eyes staring directly into the camera—entirely too close so that you can see all the pretty, pretty shades of blue and purple painting his pale skin and the burst blood vessels in his right eye. He blinks and the camera struggles to refocus; blurry, clear, then blurry again.

Morty steps back a few paces and the camera finally settles, a crisp, clear shot of his bedroom, disaster zone that it is. On screen, he takes a few moments to kick all the loose-leaf paper, occasional notebook, and magazines to one corner of his room before he turns his attention back to the camera.

" _Okay,"_ he says, his voice sounding distorted on the recording in the way that everyone feels like, fuck, is that really what I sound like? _"L-looks good. Okay."_

He shuffles back and forth on his feet, not quite looking at the camera now, and then he claps his hands together once in that 'let's do this' sort of way that you can easily tell he's not feeling.

" _So, uhh,"_ he says, and then, " _Oh, wait—"_

He walks over to the pile of papers he just moved, pulls out a notebook and flips to a blank page, then walks back across his room over to his desk where his laptop's sitting, along with a whole crap-ton of other junk. He pulls a marker out of a coffee mug that looks like a planet and scribbles something down on the notebook before moving back over to the camera.

 _"Alright, so,_ " he holds up the notebook, showing the words ' _Musiogenic Seizures? Test #1'_ written in big block letters. " _This is test one of whatever the hell is going on with me. I-I mean, I kinda have an idea,"_ he gestures at the title on the notebook, " _but we'll see how this goes."_

Tossing the notebook down on his bed, he walks back over to his computer and takes a seat at his desk. Clicking and occasionally typing, he dives right in with a brief explanation of, _"So music's been f-fucking with me big time, and clearly when I rewatch this, I-I-I can't do it with the sound on, so I'll give a 'mute' warning each time."_ He glances over his shoulder at the camera, " _T-that should work, right?"_ He pauses, turns back to his computer. " _R-right."_

There's a stretch of silence as he gets something set up on the computer. The camera blurs and refocuses, the recording's timer ticking down each second. Finally, Morty twists back around in his chair to face the camera.

" _A-alright, so, first I need to figure out a p-pattern here_ ," he says, and briefly turns his gaze to the ceiling, mumbling, " _If there is one_." He shakes his head, looks back at the camera. " _Like if it affects me th-the same way each time. When it's just one song, or like part of a song, I-I-I've just been zoning out and coming back. Real brief, y'know? So I'm gonna play a couple songs in a row, a-an-and see what happens."_

He pauses to take a breath, looks down and swallows, like he's bracing himself. He shakes his head, says to the floor, " _Stuff l-like, if different music affects me in different ways, or if the s-same song causes the-the same hallucination or not—I can try that out l-later."_

Another breath.

 _"Alright."_

He looks back up at the camera, his expression wary but a little determined at the same time.

 _"Mute warning."_

He waits ten seconds before he turns back to his computer and clicks on his first playlist, a collection of three songs he randomly selected from his iTunes account; Queen's _Bohemian Rhapsody, Don't Stop Believing_ by Journey, and last is _Mr. Blue Sky_ by ELO. The first few lyrics of _Bohemian Rhapsody_ trickle out of the laptop's speakers, but the video is already muted. It's clear that the music's playing though because the effects are almost instantaneous.

Morty's body seems to go lax in the chair. He's mostly turned away from the camera, facing his laptop, and for the first minute or so, nothing happens. He just sits there, a ragdoll in his chair, one arm flopped over the armrest with fingers hanging loose to the floor. Past the two minute mark though, his hand twitches, and seconds later his arm jerks.

It happens slowly, like the life's carefully breathed back into him, a tiny ember being coaxed into a flame. The balls of his feet press against the floor so that the computer chair sways back and forth; gently at first but then more forcefully by the three minute mark to the point where he spins the chair around for a few turns completely until he stops to face the camera.

His eyes are open. He's not looking at the camera, but rather is looking around the room, a blank expression on his face. He pulls his hanging arm back up onto the armrest and sits up a bit straighter, still looking around the room. It's close to the five minute mark by this point, the first song nearing its end, when he presses his hands against the chair and goes to stand.

And promptly flops over onto the floor, legs giving out on him immediately. He lies there for a second, face down on the floor with his arms sprawled out to the sides and his legs tangled up, and then his body starts subtly shaking. Not like a seizure though—he rolls over to his side, his face visible to the camera once more—he's laughing, like the whole thing is just fucking hilarious.

Six minutes in and the second song has started. He's like Bambi on the ice, carefully working his gangly limbs underneath him to push himself up. It seems to take a bit of effort, but he gets himself standing.

Seven minutes.

He peers around his room with a kind of slow disinterest. When he moves, it's like his body doesn't fit right; swaying steps, head tilting and weaving back and forth; a curious, awkward owl.

Eight minutes.

He paces a couple of circles around his room, pausing randomly to stretch his arms above his head and shake out his limbs. He grabs his pillows off his bed and tosses them down onto the floor, walks a circle around them and nudges them into some kind of position with his feet. And then his whole body tips forward with a kind of graceful purpose.

Nine Minutes.

He's standing on his hands, feet hanging in the air in a kind of lazy, relaxed way. He walks a couple paces around the pillows on just his hands, but then his arms shake, muscles clearly not used to such activity. When he falls though, it's not with that same full-body flop like before. No, it's done just as carefully as the handstand, his body slowly curving towards the pillows in a controlled drop. Back on the ground completely now, he stretches out spread-eagle and just lies there for a moment.

Ten minutes, and if the timing's right, the third and final song will be starting.

He's looking around the room again, head rolling back and forth on the pillows before something seems to catch his attention and he stops. He sits up. He's looking at the pile of papers shoved off to one side of his room. Not bothering to stand, he crawls over to the pile on his hands and knees and sits back down once he's in front of it.

Eleven minutes.

He starts grabbing pages at random, head tilting back and forth in that curious way as he scans through the contents. He licks his lips, brow furrowing, and then he opens his mouth and starts talking—the words unknown due to the sound being muted. He ruffles a hand through his hair and looks around the room like he's searching for something.

Twelve minutes.

He's standing again, walking back over to the desk with several of the pages in hand and grabs a pen out of the planet mug. Walking back over to the pile, he sits back down on the floor, legs folded beneath him, and spreads out the pages he grabbed. Popping the pen in his mouth, he rests his chin on one hand and seems to scan through all the pages, his eyes darting back and forth across them.

Thirteen minutes.

He makes a couple marks on the pages with the pen, but for the most part just stares at them and occasionally shifts the order of the pages on the floor.

Fourteen minutes.

When he looks back over at the pile though, he seems to change his mind entirely about whatever it is that he's doing. The pen drops to the floor from loosely parted lips and he reaches out to grab another random paper from the pile, but rather than read it over, he starts to fold it in intricate ways. He makes a paper crane and then flicks it off to the side with a smile, like he's pretending it can fly.

The last song ends at a little past the fifteen minute mark, and he spends the remainder of that time folding paper cranes. When the music does eventually stop, the change in his body language is just as clear as when it started. He slumps in place, blinking heavy eyes, and he lowers himself to the ground so that he can just lie on his side and breathe.

He lies there for several minutes.

.

* * *

.

When Morty watches the video, he tries to adopt that detached scientific perspective he had seen Rick use so often—where, yeah, it's fucked up, but you just don't think about it like that. You have to look at it from an objective point of view, even if your head's pounding and your hands shake when you tap the play button on your phone, and you watch your life unraveling at the seams, because you're losing it, buddy, look at you, you're fucking losing it.

 _"Just don't think about it, MmoOOORRty."_

Don't think about it. Don't think about it like _that._ He has to approach it without all the emotions—like, hmm, yes, _interesting,_ the music is clearly the trigger. He can mark that down as a fact now—and look at how it affects him, look at everything he does, the way his body moves while his mind is checked out, the way he's left feeling after, like he actually _is_ hungover. Yes, it's all so very _interesting._

And he suddenly understands why alcohol would be appropriate in circumstances such as these, where reality is just so disturbing that you need to drown it out, because fuck it, he already feels like shit, what's one more thing?

' _Think of the facts,'_ he tells himself forcefully, pushing all prior thoughts aside, _'Just the facts.'_

And the facts are these:

 _Music is the trigger._

He underlines this twice on a new blank page in his notebook, sitting on the floor once more, but with his back to the bed. He taps his pen against the spiral spine of the notebook before writing down the next fact… or more like observation in this case.

 _Looks like a seizure but not quite?_

He separates his bullet points about that thought into two columns, the obvious seizure symptom column and the ' _not quite'_ column. In the first column, he writes down things like: blank staring, loss of body control, meaningless random behavior, dropping to the ground—the kind of things he read about on the internet. It's possible that him talking could be something, but until he can find out a way to safely listen to the video, there's no way to know what column that would go in, if it was just unintelligible babble or… something else.

He writes it down in the corner of the page, _talking_ with a bunch of question marks circling it, and then moves on to the _'not quite'_ column.

 _I can't do a handstand._

Definitely not that well, and he'd only hurt himself if he tried it now.

 _I can't fold a paper crane._

He eyes the three cranes sitting on the floor next to him, so perfectly crafted—and then the crumpled up paper mess from his own post-musical episode attempt. It'd been the first thing he tried after watching the recording, and the results had been just like picking the lock. Impossible. Just something he shouldn't have been able to do, especially during some kind of seizure episode.

On YouTube, the people having complex partial seizures would do things like pour their cereal into a cooking pan and turn on the stove, or make random gestures with their hands, or walk circles around their living room. They didn't cook a fancy five course meal or suddenly know sign-language or expertly dance the cha-cha. _Meaningless_ and _random_ were the words used. There was nothing in all those articles about secretly gained skills.

Morty makes a vertical line of question marks separating the two columns. He vaguely remembers reading something online a while back about people who could suddenly speak a different language after a stroke, but he's pretty sure those people had some prior connection to the second language beforehand, like maybe their family spoke the second language around them when they were a child. He's never folded a paper crane before, or has seen anyone else who did as far as he can recall, and a perfect handstand isn't something you can just pick up on by seeing someone on TV doing it. It takes balance and practice. You need to train your body into it.

And as for that strange part of the video with him looking through the papers?

In the line below the two columns, he writes down ' _Math: nonsense or not?'_ because he's honestly not sure. When he actually took the time to look through all those pages that had covered his floor not too long ago, it hadn't revealed much.

Morty's never been very good at math, and while it's possible that this could go under the unexplainable skill column like the crane folding, it all just looks like clusters of alphanumeric bullshit to him. Every single page is covered in random clouds of it, letters and numbers and mathematical signs like pluses and minuses and division signs and stuff that he didn't even know could be used in math, but he wouldn't be surprised if it could—eventually he'd had to stack all the pages into a neat pile and push them away because just looking at them made his head spin—and unless he takes it to an actual math genius, there's really no way to know if it's all nonsense or not.

Sighing, he draws a horizontal line under what he's written, separating the page, and puts down his next few facts.

 _Beginning symptoms looks like it could be a seizure, but the end of the video doesn't match up._

 _I'm only partially aware of what's going on (what my body's doing) in the episode.*_

 _*Awareness comes and goes during hallucinations._

 _**Awareness gets more clear the longer the episode lasts_

It had been just like the night before. In-between flashes of the hallucinations, he'd been aware of the handstand and the crane-folding and looking over the math problems, but it'd all been in such a distant, detached way—like at the time, he knew that he wanted to do a hand stand, but now when he looks back on it, he can't recall why he did it or how he even pulled it off so well.

The next note he puts down is written a bit hesitantly.

 _(maybe try it for longer? See what happens?)_

He nervously chews on the end of his pen. It doesn't seem like a good idea, but that's just all part of the scientific method, isn't it? Making a hypothesis (or is the correct term 'theory'?) and then running tests to see if you're right or not. He vaguely remembers Rick going on a brief rant over the whole thing when Morty had asked him for some help with a science project, but there'd been a tone of ' _You're so stupid, Morty'_ to that whole rant that it's a bit hard to see past the feelings of annoyance surrounding the memory for him to remember what his grandfather had actually said.

Drawing another line across the page, he moves on to the next bit of information he needs to write down about this particular experiment. The hallucinations. He'd had several of them, each one playing out before his eyes like he was living the moment himself before it switched to something new and different—Queen singing out that first verse, ' _Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?'_ and he'd blinked and been at school.

And Rick had been standing at the front of the classroom teaching science, writing some overly complicated shit on the white board that was way above their grade level. The entire class shared lost, panicked looks.

 _Rick as a teacher,_ Morty writes down on the page, _Or substitute teaching?_

He'd been older in the hallucination. Taller. In high school most likely. Rick looked just about the same; he was wearing glasses, but that could have easily just been for show. He'd also looked extremely bored, like he'd rather be anywhere else. He didn't leave though, instead he'd announced that they'd be working on a science experiment for class that day.

 _"Some rreEEEAAALll cool shit with fire, yo. Y-you'll all love it,"_ he said. _"A-aalll right, partner time."_

Rick had paired everyone off, at first seemingly at random, but then he got to Morty and he'd partnered Morty up with one Blake Shaw—someone who, in reality, Morty has never met before in his life—yet in the hallucination, Morty had looked at this kid and he'd felt a pleasant fluttering in his chest that he's never felt for another guy before, along with irritation at Rick for meddling. By that point, it'd been pretty easy to conclude that he must have a rather large crush on this Blake person, or at least in the hallucination he did.

Morty summarizes the entire thing in a few quick sentences before moving on.

The next one had thankfully been brief—

He'd been swimming in a lake, except the water was purple and all his clothes were still on. There'd been no sign of Rick, not out in the water or up on the shore. The entire hallucination was oddly quiet, the silence broken only by the sound of Morty gasping as he paddled through the water.

Then as one hand paddled down, it brushed against something large and slick and those gasps turned into a scream. Something wrapped around his wrist and dragged him under, air bubbles floating up in his wake.

Another blink and he was in the park, walking along the thin metal railing of some playground equipment like it was a balance beam. He'd been seven feet up in the air and Rick watched him from the ground below. The man heckled him, saying he'd seen better balance on one-legged dogs, telling him in that gritty, unimpressed voice that gymnastics was a lame sport anyways, it could hardly be called a sport at all.

So Morty did a handstand, showed off by walking a couple paces along the railings, and Rick matched his steps below, keeping close even as he continued to shout things up at him like, " _Ohh, yeeah, t-think you're a bigshot now, huh? More like a big- **shit** , y-ya lil' shit—"_

And then Morty's hand had slipped, and he fell, and Rick bolted forward to catch him, a brief flash of panic on the man's face.

Clearly that's the hallucination he'd been having at the time he'd done the handstand in his room. Morty marks the obvious connection down in the notebook. He's kind of curious about the outcome of that particular hallucination, but it had switched to the next one immediately after.

One where he'd been counting cards. They were at an alien casino and Rick was sitting to his left, pretending that they didn't know each other. Every now and then, he'd give Rick some kind of symbol, or Rick would give him one, so they'd know what moves to make when. It had clearly been well practiced—this act of theirs—and the shiny crystal chips had rapidly piled up in front of them with each hand.

Morty supposes there could be some connection between that and him looking over the math equations that had been written down on all those papers. He's pretty sure being able to count cards takes some kind of mathematical skills, and anyway, the hallucination after that had involved folding origami with his sister, and Rick unconscious on the hospital bed between them. It hadn't exactly been a pleasant memory. He remembers sitting there and this feeling of being worried but not wanting Summer to see just how worried he was.

His notes of this entire first test fill three pages, but Morty feels no closer to answers than before. Time is hard to judge during the hallucinations. He can't say for sure what one matched up with what song and exactly what kind of effect the songs changing had, if there was any effect at all, and from what little information he was able to get, there's really not a lot to go on.

 _'That's not exactly true, is it?'_ He taps his pen on the notebook, frowning. _'You know it can't just be seizures. Seizures alone don't do all of this.'_

He looks down at the row of paper cranes, and then glances across the room at the padlock sitting on his desk. He bites his lip and taps his pen more rapidly, and his eyes fall to the pages full of math problems—because where exactly did all of that come from either? There's no way he wrote it, he's not smart enough; he can barely even figure out the word problems they work on in school.

 _If Morty makes up a playlist of twelve songs and each song is approximately three and a half minutes long, with a hallucination happening every two minutes, just how many songs will it take for Morty to completely lose his shit? Solve for X._

What is this?

What's happening here?

He pops his pen back in his mouth and quickly flips to the front of the notebook in his hands, not sure what to expect—more math equations, some secret coded message, _satanic rituals_ for all he knows—but all he finds is plant stuff, things written down from shop; information about photosynthesis and how certain plants need certain amounts of light each day, or thrive on certain kinds of food. Direct sunlight, indirect sunlight, compost variations, different watering methods, genus and species and—

Boring, so very boring, at least to him.

He never wanted any of this, never agreed to any of this.

 _Poor Rickless bastard, living a life of mediocrity._

The pen cracks between his teeth—he hadn't even realized he'd been grinding them—and ink floods his mouth and dribbles down one corner of his lip.

He tears out a couple pieces of blank paper and spits out the pen and ink and blackened saliva into it, crumpling it up into a ball and throwing it across the room. His hand shakes as he wipes at his mouth, black ink smearing across his fingers and palms and likely his cheek—and then he has to laugh because he realizes the stain is on the same side of his face as his bruised eye. He almost feels like he should smear some ink over onto the other side of his face to even things out.

He wipes his hand off on his pants, not even caring at this point about the mess.

He _is_ a mess.

One giant fucking mess.

His eyes drift back over to his computer, and the question flits across his mind once more—about what would happen if he listened to the music for even longer. He already knows he won't be going to school tomorrow either, and then he'll have all weekend after that to recover.

These are the clinical trials of his life after all, and he is both the scientist and the patient.

What's one more mess?

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

.

When dad knocks on his door to turn the music down, it's not Morty who answers it. He can't say for sure who he is, but he definitely doesn't feel like himself—like Morty C-137 whose Rick is gone and whose life is being gradually warped by the Federation. He opens the door and feels a wide array of emotions, too many to fully process, too many to possibly be all his own. Fear, annoyance, anger, sadness, happiness, awe—open the door and think, _Wow, Dad, can I have a hug?_ —but his arms only twitch at his sides and he stands there and stares. He's a ghost, a particle floating in space; stand there for too long and the world around him ceases to exist.

This is what happens when he listens to music for too long.

.

 _"Boy, are **you** fun," Rick's voice drips with sarcasm as he takes the blunt away from Morty. "Remind me to never give you pot again."_

 _._

"Morty," his dad repeats himself. He sounds sleepy and irritated, so Morty's quick to respond.

"Yeah," he says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll—" it takes a moment for his brain to process exactly what he's agreeing too, "I'll turn the music down."

He wants to laugh. It's such a normal teenage problem—or at least must seem like it is to his dad— _Turn down that damn music, son, and clean up your room!_ Morty almost feels like he should smear on some eyeliner and swear at the man about how he _just doesn't understand;_ turn this household into a real sitcom. But then his dad stares at him for a moment too long, probably looking at the ink stains on his face, and _Adele_ sings loudly behind them, and Morty's suddenly struck with a vision of _being_ struck, of his dad raising his voice and then his hand, and it takes everything in him not to flinch back because he knows none of it is real.

Promising again that he'll turn down the music, Morty closes the door quickly and shakes off his nerves. Tells himself ' _not real, not real, not real'_ as he walks over to his computer and lowers the volume, tilting his head back to listen for the sound of his dad's footsteps fading away.

.

 _Rick grips his chin gently and turns his head to the side, tells Morty to hold still as he carefully lasers away the bruise with a small wand-looking device. The man's knuckles are bloodied._

.

Morty's hands are cupping his own face when he blinks back and he realizes that he's humming along to the song, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, swaying back and forth in a comforting way. Back when he had first started pre-school, there had been a kid in his class who would hum to himself and rock back and forth, and that's exactly what Morty reminds himself of right now. _Soothing motions,_ the teacher had called it, _a way of self-comfort._ Of course, he'd also hear them telling parents the same thing when other kids in the class would masturbate during naptime. _Self-soothing motions._ It happened more often than you'd think.

 _Don't worry,_ they'd say to the parents, _It's natural. Completely normal._

Normal. Natural. Not disturbing at all. Nothing to see here, folks.

Morty laughs. Yes, everything is A-OK. Whatever this is, he's just adjusting, adapting, his existence is rewiring. Evolution didn't happen in a day.

.

 _His hand presses against the thick wall of glass, a glossy clear barrier curving around him in a large dome, separating him from the outside world. He hums. He likes the way the glass feels against his hands, and he loves his protective bubble. Pillows and heavy blankets cover the cushioned floor, the temperature is always coolly comfortable, and the gravity disk connecting his shrunken bubble to the choker wrapped around Rick's neck keeps everything nice and stable, even when his grandfather's running from some alien._

 _Morty loves going on adventures with Rick. He gets to see so many amazing things in the universe, and Rick never treats him like he's stupid or less of a person._

 _"How ya—how ya doing in there, Morty?"_

 _Morty gives a content, acknowledging hum towards the question. He leans forward to fog up the glass with his breath and draws a picture of a happy sun._

 _"G-great. Alright, kid, eyes forward. You-you'll want to see this."_

 _A giant purple planet passes by in the sky, orbiting so close that you can see the ocean rise up to greet it far in the distance._

 _._

He's arranging the pages on his bedroom floor, organizing—pattern, pattern, gotta find the pattern, clusters of numbers that go with other clusters of numbers, because there's a method to this madness, he's sure. Even the paper cranes have been unfolded and flattened out. He doesn't really know what he's doing or what he's looking at, but he's filled with this need to _fix it—_ because it was perfect before and you-you _fucked it all up_.

Kicked it all to the side so carelessly like trash— _what were you thinking, you fuck up, fuck up, fuck up—_

"Don't—don't mess with my papers," the words fall out of his mouth, directed at himself or at someone else, he doesn't really know.

Morty frog-hops from one part of his room to another, snatching up pages that just don't look right, don't belong with their neighbors, and moving them to other places in the room where it all just _feels better—_ meant to be in a way it wasn't before. It digs at him, how slowly it all comes together, too slowly—and how no matter what he does, there are pages that just don't _seem right_ no matter where they sit in the room—incomplete, not yet finished. In the rare instance where he does find two pages that definitely _do_ go together, he pulls off strips of scotch tape from the dispenser on his desk and binds them together—won't let himself fuck it up again.

He's a careful spider—neurotic, they would say—weaving a web from instinct alone, because there's a point here, a message; Charlotte writing out the words ' _Some Pig'_ to save the life of a stupid farm animal.

.

 _Rick drops a towel over Morty's head, thick and fluffy with that freshly laundered warmth that seems to trickle down into his brain and soothe the overwhelming buzzing bees that have taken up residence in his mind. Morty goes still on the living room carpet, inhales slowly, taking in the faint scent of bleach and laundry detergent—and suddenly the puzzle he'd been working on and the fact that the carpet fibers aren't going in the right direction don't really matter at that moment._

 _"Thanks, Dad," Mom who is also 'Beth,' but prefers to be called 'Mom' says._

 _"Yeah, whha-AAAATT-ever," Rick belches, and Morty turns his head in the direction of the man's voice, towel still blocking his vision. Morty likes that, likes the way Rick burps words and drags out his letters and sentences—he doesn't know why, just that it's different and fun._

 _When Beth who is also Mom leaves, Rick who is also Grandpa, but prefers 'Rick,' crouches down on the floor next to Morty and lifts up the towel. Rick doesn't look directly at him, which Morty is thankful for, and Morty keeps his eyes down on the shiny metal flask in the man's hand._

 _"So I was—I was thinking, Morty, we could go on another little trip tomorrow," Rick says. "Th-there are these—these, uh, alien fish Grandpa needs. R-reeeeaaal pretty and colorful. I'll even let you keep one. H-how's that sound?"_

 _Morty smiles, reaches out and grabs at Rick's sleeve._

 _"Yeah, th-thought you'd like that."_

.

Morty opens his eyes to mathematical formulas; crinkled pages taped together and draped over his face like a patchwork quilt. He's lying on the ground, arms sprawled up by his head, not sure what time it is or how long he's been lying there, how long the music has been playing. A piano chorus from a song he doesn't recognize plays in the background, and his arms and legs jerk involuntarily a few times before he drags himself into a sitting position, the pages slipping down to his lap. He stares down at them for a moment, looks at how the writing on one page overlaps with another, the two fitting together perfectly like a puzzle piece.

"Find the pattern," he mumbles sleepily, nonsensically.

A quick glance around his room shows more of the same, among dozens of free-floating pages scattered randomly across his carpet are several large collages messily taped together; take a picture and it's a metaphor for his state of mind. Tape himself together and call himself whole.

Morty moves between the mess of pages carefully this time, only stepping on carpet with light, wavering footsteps as he crosses his room.

.

 _Walking through a scattered pile of empty beer bottles; be careful of broken glass hidden in the carpet fibers or his feet will start to bleed again._

.

He knows he can't just leave it like this, awkwardly dancing between his desk and his bed and the bedroom door day in and day out, so he grabs a bunch of tacks from his desk and sets to work on swapping out the posters on his wall for the paper collages on the floor.

.

 _Reaching out with glowing fingertips and knitting needles to stitch together the wriggling threads of the universe, preserving the pattern. What a nice set of constellations in that sweater._

.

It takes up the entire wall over his bed—with the single pages pinned to the wall space over his desk—and when he steps back to take it all in, his heart clenches at how eerily familiar it all looks to the mess Rick would frequently leave his room in. Nonsensical science mumbo-jumbo scribbled onto scrap paper; all he needs now is some creepy alien photos and string to tie it all together.

His parents will flip if they see it. This is not the image of a stable human mind.

.

 _Clasp his hands together and lean forward as if in prayer, but he is not praying. He is waiting, sitting curled up in a stiff hospital chair as his dad and step-mom discuss his future with a child psychiatrist in some dimly lit backroom—because according to them, there is no Rick and there never was. There was no space travel or other universes, none of it had been real, and there's no reason to be grieving because there was never any grandfather figure to feel loss for in the first place._

 _He never should have told them, never should have opened his mouth about what happened to him that year he went missing._

 _._

Eyes snap open and his mind hisses at him, _'Hide the truth. Don't let them see.'_

The posters go back up on the wall, covering paper clusters and hiding random scribbles from prying eyes. It doesn't matter. He doesn't understand what any of it means anyway, and at least now it's all out of the way. A couple of notebooks on the floor still, some magazines and dirty clothes; his room almost looks normal again.

The song on his computer switches over, _Time in a Bottle_ by Jim Croce, and Morty sinks down on his bed—whatever manic energy he'd had before bleeding out of him—with his feet up by his pillows and his right arm dangling over the side. He eyes his cell phone still recording everything on his dresser, wonders how much memory he even has on the device, how long it can actually record for. He'll need to make a point of moving the videos over to his laptop every couple of tests.

A shiver runs through him and he shuts his eyes. Exhales. He's so tired. He needs to stop, take a break. He can feel his t-shirt growing damp with sweat, and the faint thrum of his own heartbeat inside his chest. How long has it even been? What time is it?

Peeling his eyes open, he sees that it's already grown dark outside his window. Mom should be home soon. He needs to pull the plug on the experiments for tonight, make an appearance downstairs, smile and act normal.

When he goes to sit up though, he can't quite manage it; his body feeling too heavy to lift and his arms shaking from the effort. He thinks he may have overdone it, feels like maybe he should have thought this extended test over a bit more, or at the very least come up with some kind of emergency stop plan beforehand.

A panic button, because he's definitely panicking. His hands scrabble uselessly at his bedsheets, breath hitching in his chest, and Jim Croce just goes on singing that slow eerie melody—

 _But there never seems to be enough time_

 _To do the things you want to do, once you find them_

He forces himself up inch by inch onto his elbows, pins and needles going up his arms from the movement and spots dancing in the corner of his vision.

 _I've looked around enough to know_

 _That you're the one I want to go through time with_

Please, _Jesus,_ he wants it to stop—and he almost opens his mouth to call out for his dad, for Summer, when everything goes blurry.

.

 _It's probably the most embarrassing thing to happen to him at the Citadel. Morty always considered himself a step above all the rest when it came to physical prowess, better than all the other Morties he's come across. He's stronger, faster, more agile than the other Morties, and from day one, his Rick has only encouraged that confidence—probably because Morty has won the man more than a few bets with his skills, but Morty also likes to think he genuinely makes Rick proud. Those moments when Rick looks at him like he's the best Morty there is—he lives for that shit, more than he'd like to admit._

 _Which is why his stomach freezes into a cold block of ice when he comes-to in the med tent, his last few coherent memories playing on repeat in his mind. He'd been so close, right in first place like always and nearly at the finish line. He would have won the Morty Olympics for the third year in a row, and Rick would have won all that money he bet on him._

 _When the tent flap opens and his Rick steps through, Morty's breath catches in his throat and he nearly flinches away._

 _He's not expecting the exasperated relief to escape the man's mouth._

 _"Jesus, are you okay?"_

 _Morty's voice fails him, so he only nods, and Rick's right by his side an instant later and shoving a bottle of orange juice into his hands. Morty's shaking too much to uncap it himself, so Rick opens it up for him and passes it back over. As he takes a few long, slow gulps of the drink, Rick lifts up Morty's sleeve and prods carefully at the steel band wrapped around his upper arm._

 _"You forgot to change out your cartridge, dipshit," Rick says, but the insult is half-hearted at best. "Christ, you gotta be m-more careful with your blood sugar, Morty. Y-y-you—you're gonna send grandpa to an e-early—you're gonna give me a heart attack, kid."_

.

Morty's foot catches on the last step and his arms flail out to grab hold of the railing before he's sent all the way to his knees. It takes a moment for his mind to clear, for his soul to sink back into his meat suit and adjust to reality again, realize that he's not in his room anymore but rather in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn't remember leaving his room, doesn't remember making the trip down all those steps, but as the cotton dissolves from his brain and the world gradually crystallizes around him, he realizes that this is just one more factor to his fucked up condition; falling in so deep that you're practically sleepwalking.

Shivers running through him, Morty lowers himself down onto the last step, his hands clinging to the banister. The music is probably still playing up in his room, but he doesn't hear it now—at the same time though, he wandered pretty far without it, some kind of lingering residue of whatever's going on with him maybe—like the side-effects will be slower to leave the longer he listens to music.

The shivers certainly don't stop, and he can already feel the oncoming headache, starting at his right temple and gradually expanding outward. He grits his teeth against the trembling, the discomfort, and a remnant of the hallucination echoes in his head— _blood sugar—your blood sugar, Morty._

Hands digging into the banister, Morty slowly drags himself to his feet. His head rushes and floats from that one simple movement, but he soldiers through it, putting one foot in front of the other and holding onto the walls along the way when the hallway tilts to one side just a little bit too much. He staggers into the kitchen like a zombie, eyes half-lidded and his hands reaching limply out to whatever he can grab onto for support. Morty almost feels like he's detached from his body again by the time he makes it to the fridge and pulls the door open.

The _click_ and _hiss_ barely even registers in his mind until he already has the can of soda pressed to his lips and sucks the drink down; trembling hands sending dribbles of Pepsi down the corners of his mouth and neck and soaking into his shirt. The can hits the ground with an empty metallic _cling_ a moment later, but he's already too busy reaching into the freezer for a tub of ice cream to really notice.

 _'Mint chocolate-chip,'_ his thoughts only briefly note as he pries off the lid and digs in with numb fingers. He scoops globs of it into his mouth, feels like he's drifting as he does so, and it's not until his tongue is numb from the cold and the tub of ice cream is a third of the way gone before he starts to feel human again.

Mint chocolate-chip ice cream. Morty pauses with sticky fingers still in his mouth, that minty sweet flavor melting on his tongue. It had been Rick's favorite, and even after all these months, Mom still makes sure the freezer is stocked with a fresh tub of it.

" _I'm just going to get some ice cream, Morty."_

Sucking the remaining flavor from his fingers, Morty pulls them from his mouth with a pop and stares down at the open ice cream tub still cradled against his chest. His nose wrinkles up at the sight of it. It's very clearly been clawed through in the most unsanitary way. Lovely. He might as well just write his name on it or otherwise throw it out completely.

"M-Morty?" his mom's voice calls hesitantly from behind him.

Morty whips around in place to face her, his eyes wide—and then immediately has to lean back against the fridge, because _wow,_ that had been way too fast too soon. His mom stares at him with eyes just as wide and this baffled look on her face like she's not quite sure what she just walked in on, or if she even wants to know in the first place. He can only imagine the sight he makes—bruised and ink-stained and sticky with soda and smears of ice cream.

She's holding three large bags of greasy take-out in her hands, something from the nearby BurgerHut. Gesturing with the bags a bit helplessly, she laughs and asks, "So, um, are you not hungry for dinner then?"

"M-maybe, uhh—maybe after a shower?"

She forces a smile, "Probably a good idea."

* * *

.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

 **.**

It's way too fucking early to be up when he doesn't even have to go to school that day, and yet Morty's up anyway. His eyes just snapped open on their own accord and suddenly he's wide awake, but without all the energy and stamina that comes with being wide awake. He wonders if this is what dying feels like, a sudden mental clarity that seems in direct contrast to the exhaustion and aches and pains afflicting your body.

He lies in bed with his eyes stubbornly shut again and wishing for at least a temporary oblivion—just another hour or so, _please,_ fall back asleep.

Unconscious relief never comes though, and after a while of lying there and being acutely aware of just how sore and uncomfortable his body feels pressed against the mattress, he groans and turns on his side and surrenders himself to fate. With a fumbling flail of his arm, he blindly reaches out to the nightstand next to him until he feels the smooth, cool surface of his cellphone screen, pops the charger cord off with his thumb and drags the thing closer to him. Turning the device on is like creating a tiny sun right in front of his face, just fucking _blinding_ , so he keeps his eyes closed until they adjust and unlocks the screen from memory alone—2137 and he's in.

"Alright," he rasps, opening his eyes in a squint against the light from the screen. The time only reads at 5:23AM—jesus, _why?_ What did he do to deserve this?

Grumbling out a few swears, he swipes the screen left and taps on the camera icon, because he might as well do something while he's up, and if he's lucky, maybe this'll tire him out enough to go back to sleep for a few more hours.

Yawning, Morty taps the ' _flip screen'_ button so that he's looking at himself—and _Christ,_ what a mess. It's possible that it just looks that bad because of the lighting, but his bruises haven't faded much. At the very least, the cuts don't look as bad, not as fresh, but he's still clearly not in any state to be walking around in public, especially at school under the watchful eyes of the Federation. He hopes he'll be all set by Monday—being absent for too long would raise some flags—but at this point, he's just not sure if he can manage it.

He should be spending these next three days resting, healing, getting himself back in order—logically he knows this—but at the same time… he has things he needs to figure out, tests that need to be run. If he doesn't have a better understanding of this by Monday, he's practically going to school with a bomb strapped to his chest. Who knows when and where it could go off?

 _'It'll just be a small test,'_ he tells himself. _'Just this one thing and then I'll try to go back to sleep.'_

Still lying on his side, and with no intention of getting up, Morty hits the record button.

"Good morning, self," he mumbles to the screen with a sleepy blink. "Don't I look p-pretty?"

Sighing, he rubs at his eyes as carefully as he can and half-heartedly explains, "So this is, um, t-test three of _Musio-_ something, I don't even know." Tucking his free hand under his head, Morty stares back into the screen with half-lidded eyes, "I'm just gonna see if, uhh, _thinking_ about music has the—the same effect.

"A-alright, so… here goes…"

He shuts his eyes and starts mentally playing out the first song that comes to mind—which, for some reason is ' _The Lion Sleeps Tonight,'_ like what even? When was the last time he even heard that song? Still, he supposes there could be worst songs to have playing in your head. ' _The Lion Sleeps Tonight'_ isn't that bad.

And it's also not doing anything to him either.

Morty's eyes snap open and his brow furrows. He stares into the recording screen with a pinched frown on his face.

Huh.

"Nothing."

Not a single damn thing.

"Well… okay, so I-I guess that's a good thing, r-right?" he says, unsure. "Just thinking about music doesn't do anything s-so at least it doesn't matter i-i-if I get a song stuck in my head, right?"

But what does it even mean? Morty feels like only a neurologist could tell him for sure, but he's still filled with this sense that he shouldn't be telling anybody; a nervous, anxious feeling to keep it all hidden. For now, he'll just have to make a note of it like everything else, and hope that somewhere down the line, all those puzzle pieces will start forming a clearer picture.

"One more test," he decides, because he still feels wide awake and the lack of a response from the last test seems more like a step back than a step forward. "Does just me singing do anything?"

He's not much of a singer, but the odds of it causing a hallucination point to _yes_ based on every other result he's had so far _,_ and anyway, it'd be a helpful thing to know. After all, he wouldn't want to unintentionally start singing in the shower and set himself off—zone out and go wandering down the hall naked. Yeah, that's all he needs.

He's not singing ' _The Lion Sleeps Tonight'_ though.

Taking a slow breath to brace himself—because even after doing this several times already, falling into the hallucinations are still a jarring sensation—Morty opens his mouth and starts to sing.

"A long, long time ago," he begins slow, "I can still remember how, that music used to make me smile."

It's slower this time, the effects. Morty still feels lucid, the mattress beneath him and the blankets covering him, but he also hears the strum of an electric guitar that can't possibly be there.

He keeps going, breathes in-between strings of lyrics and keeps his voice on tune.

"And I knew if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance, and maybe they'd be happy for a while—"

A voice joins the guitar, one that can actually sing, one that's familiar—and gradually a light-headed feeling starts to grow, a sensation of drifting, floating up. Morty shuts his eyes tight, voice wavering as he goes on.

"But February made me shiver, with every paper I'd deliver— _fuck—_ bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step—"

.

 _The lights are bright and hot, sweat dripping down his face, but Morty just smiles through it all, keeps playing his guitar off to the left, his eyes never once straying from the silhouette on center-stage up ahead._

 _._

"I can't remember if I cried," faintly, Morty can hear the sound of his own voice singing, but he hardly feels in control of it anymore. His bedroom is a distant echo, his body falling into a kind of autopilot; sleepwalking, sleepsinging, is that even a thing? Regardless, his vocal chords go on without him, singing through the remainder of the song's intro, pausing only at the song's first chorus, because that's how the song goes, a brief pause, and then—

"So bye, bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry—"

It all falls away—reality, coherence.

.

 _Rick plays his own guitar like his life depends on it, leaning in close to the mic and diving right into the chorus of one of The Flesh Curtain's most popular songs. The crowd roars but Rick shuts his eyes to them, becoming completely enveloped in the song. Morty loves to watch his grandfather perform; he doesn't think he's ever seen the man look as content with life as he does when he's singing and playing that guitar._

 _To the right of the stage, Bird Person provides backup vocals, and behind them, Squanchy goes wild on the drums—and Morty just can't believe Rick let him be a part of this all; a true galaxy-wide Flesh Curtains revival tour._

 _From a very young age, Rick had taught Morty how to play a variety of musical instruments, but Morty would have never expected it to all lead to something like this. It's the greatest adventure he's ever been on with Rick. He almost doesn't want the tour to ever end._

 _He picks up the pace on his playing. Time for this particular song's grand finale._

 _._

When Morty comes back to himself, he's flopped over on his back on the bed, the blankets tangled up around his legs and his cellphone on the floor, dropped there at some point during the episode. He finally feels sleepy again, exhausted, with his body weighed down to the bed like the gravity in his room had increased.

It takes a lot of effort, but he manages to roll back over onto his side and drops his arm over the end of the bed, stretching down with all the strength he can manage to reach his cellphone and hit the button to stop recording. For a moment after, he stays hanging half off the bed like that, just letting his body be limp, inactive. Only when he starts to get uncomfortable does he bother to pull himself back up onto the bed, groaning the entire time.

Lying back on the bed, he kicks the blankets back into a suitable position and pulls them up to his chin, curling onto his side to get comfortable. His eyes slowly starting to blink closed, Morty's gaze drifts over to his window to see that morning has come, the dark sky outside growing lighter, and he can't help but think of a certain song, a tranquil guitar beat playing out in his head; the only way, it seems, that he can actually safely enjoy music anymore.

 _'Here comes the sun, do-do do-do…'_

Him and Rick standing in the garage at the crack of dawn—and for once it's a memory of his own, something that actually happened—the two of them standing out there working on some experiment. The garage door had been up because this particular experiment called for ventilation, and as the sun started to rise, Rick began singing, low and absentminded, a soothing melody.

' _Here comes the sun—'_ Morty still remembers Rick's voice, how relaxed it had been.

 _'—And I say, it's all right…'_

He slips off to sleep.

.

* * *

.

By Saturday night, Morty runs out of things to keep testing. The results are all the same in that it's all just completely fucking random—like rolling a pair of dice, it's unpredictably different every time. Playing the same song over doesn't give him the same hallucination. It doesn't even give him hallucinations from the same—he doesn't know what to call it—universe? Reality? If the hallucinations are like chapters in a book—the book about his life as a con artist, the book where he has tentacles for arms, the book where his hair is blue and he has a passion for art—playing out the same song, or even the same _type_ of music doesn't give him the same 'book' each time.

This would be the point to stop. He's collected all the data he can possibly think of to collect, and as far as he can tell, there's no real way to control it other than avoiding music entirely. It's not the best option, but it is an _option—_ avoid music and there will be no more seizure-like zone-outs, no more headaches, no more energy drains or drops in his blood sugar… and no more hallucinations…

It's what he should be doing—either that or seeking out professional help, see if maybe there's a pill he can take or something. Clearly, whatever this is, isn't healthy, and he should be spending the rest of his weekend coming up with a strategy to prevent it from happening as much as possible.

But… no more hallucinations?

.

 _Rick cuts a thin line of the glittery pink powder with the razor, tells Morty that it's pretty potent shit, so that's all he'll really need, and then he slouches down in the couch with his arms thrown up over the back, a rainbow of different colored track-marks decorating the man's bare arms._

 _Grinning, Morty leans down over the glass coffee table and, pressing one nostril closed with his finger, snorts up the line of power in one quick drag. It tickles his nasal passages and makes his head buzz in the most pleasant of ways. He flops over sideways on the couch and curls up against the armrest with a content sigh._

 _Rick laughs, patting Morty's ankle a few times before leaning back over the coffee table to cut a new line of the powder for himself._

 _._

Morty blinks his eyes open, the song having faded out several seconds before. The comparison is unsettling to say the least, and it's one he can't exactly deny. There's no more reason to be listening to music, no real test he can think of, and yet he's still doing it anyway. Not just once or twice either, but for hours now. At first, he kept insisting to himself that he was just making sure he was covering all his bases, running every possibly test there could be, seeing if maybe he'd stumble upon some answer to this all—and maybe that was true for a little while, but as the hours dragged on, it became easy to see through to the real truth, that he just… enjoys the hallucinations because he misses Rick.

He's even starting to get used to the side-effects—that's not to say that they're fading by any means, but with each hallucination, the discomfort becomes just a little bit easier to ignore.

' _It's just for this weekend,'_ he swears to himself. ' _Just this weekend and then I'll stop and avoid it like I should be doing.'_

Just one more beer, one more pill, one last injection, one last hurrah before entering Sober City—Morty sees it all the time in those drug addiction TV shows his mom likes to watch, or those Soap Operas his dad has a secret love for. Everyone always tells themselves that they'll stop, but they rarely ever do. Rick never made any such promises—but then, he never had any intention of quitting his vices, and he was never shy about this fact either. Down a shot from his flask and belch out loudly, ' _Fuck being sober'_ he'd say.

 _'This is different,'_ Morty tells himself. ' _This isn't alcohol or drugs, this is a condition I'm exploring. Anyone would want to know more about some strange new sickness they have.'_

He will stop.

He will.

.

* * *

.

Summer sneaks out at 1AM, likely for nefarious gang or cult related reasons or whatever the hell this group she's involved with is, but since Morty very clearly isn't invited this time around, he puts his headphones back on and pretends he hadn't heard her shuffling out the back door in the first place. It's Sunday morning, technically, and he's sitting at his laptop because sleep won't come. He managed to catch a few hours' rest between 10PM and 12AM, but then it'd been just like before, his mind snapping awake before his body is even close to ready.

The latest video file finishes transferring over to his computer, four minutes long and titled _Music WTF_Test 26._ It's not much different from the last several tests—him wandering around his room in a zombie-like fashion doing things that are either impossible or make no sense. He doesn't know why he still bothers recording; nothing changes and he's even stopped pretending to be trying out some new test or theory. There's nothing left to try, nothing he can think of. The condition has him stumped.

It's all just about the visions now; hallucinations, whatever they are.

Morty flips through one of his notebooks, thirty-seven pages of false memories, and in nearly all of them, Rick's there. He either never left, or he's coming into Morty's life for the first time—picking Morty up when he's down, saving him, just _being_ there, being involved no matter how dysfunctional or unstable the man may be.

This stopped being about just figuring out his condition a while back—and when thoughts start to rear up about why his Rick left when all these other imagined Ricks stayed, Morty finds himself clicking the _play_ button.

Slurping at a can of soda, Morty starts a new recording, this time on his laptop directly so that the length of the video doesn't really matter.

Glancing up at the webcam, he sets his soda down and says, "So, uh… this is test twenty-seven of _'Music – What The Fuck?'_ I-I, um, I'll be honest here. Th-there's no real reason to this test. I just want—wanna listen to music for a while, a-an-and I just figured I should record it in-in case something significant happens."

He shrugs. It's the truth, and since these videos are only for himself, there's no real reason to lie.

Taking another drink from his soda, Morty puts together a couple new playlists to go through, one after the other based on how up to it he feels after each episode. Each playlist is completely random in music type—from all the classic rock and older songs he'd recently gotten into because it's what Rick had liked best, to more recent hits, and soundtracks from different movies, and all the way down to the poppy tween songs he'd listened to several years back (he'll admit he's a little curious as to what kind of visions _Coldplay, Panic at the Disco,_ and _Fall Out Boy_ will cause).

Hugging the blanket he'd dragged over from his bed around him a bit tighter, Morty pulls his feet up onto his computer chair, knees pressed against his chest. Time to evacuate sanity and soul.

He clicks play.

.

 _Morty doesn't know his grandfather well—in fact, he'd been surprised to find out that he even had a living grandfather at all, but Mom seems happy to have the man back in their life, so Morty figures it's fine that Rick is living out of their garage now. He doesn't see himself forming any kind of familial relationship with Rick—it's been a week since he's moved in and other than responding back to Morty's quickly signed 'Hello' that first day he showed up, Rick hasn't bothered to leave the garage once. Mom even brings his meals out to him._

 _So at the end of the week, Morty's frankly baffled when Rick knocks on his bedroom door, but that's not nearly as surprising as the question Rick asks him._

 _"Do you want your voice back?" The man's holding some kind of strange blinking device that looks to be filled with a pink liquid. "I can fix it for you."_

 _Morty stares at him with wide eyes, mouth hanging open. He almost can't take the question seriously—like this has to be some kind of bad joke, right?—but the look on Rick's face is quite serious, so he turns the offer over in his head like it's a real one. His voice wasn't something he lost because he never had it in the first place, but does he want the ability to speak? To open his mouth and be able to talk like everyone else? It's a subject he's given a lot of thought on over the years, like **a lot—** a lot, so the answer comes to him pretty quick. _

_'No,' Morty signs, and he shrugs, signing, 'This is me.'_

 _Rick tucks the device away in his lab coat, accepts Morty's answer as easily as that._

 _And then to Morty's shock, Rick lifts his own hands and signs, 'Alright, cool. Want to see some more awesome science shit?'_

 _Morty smiles._

 _'Yeah, sounds fun.'_

 _._

Morty's hands drop to his lap from where they'd been signing words to the camera. He coughs a few times, a rasp deep in his throat, and he wants to reach out for another drink of his soda, but a new song is starting and his body won't cooperate.

.

 _Wings stretched out behind him and clawed feet pounding against the ground, Morty's running as fast as he possibly can. To his left, Rick's running right along next to him, keeping pace, with his arms stretched out to his sides._

 _"C'mon, Morty, faster!" Rick shouts, and occasionally, he'll flap his arms up and down. "Just like this, Morty. Y-you can do it; you just need to catch the wind. I-it's science, Morty, aerodynamics."_

 _They're approaching the cliff rapidly, with Summer gliding along overhead. If he's going to back out, lose his nerve, now would be the time._

 _And his nervousness must show on his face, because the next thing Rick shouts to him is, "No fear, Morty! Just do it! Do it! Fly!"_

 _Rick stops quick, his feet skidding against the ground before the cliff edge gets too close, but Morty keeps going, forces in an extra burst of speed, his wings fanned out and held taut. Heart in his throat, but determination burning in his eyes, he rockets off the cliff. There's a moment where time seems to slow down, his body airborne, with only Summer there to catch him if he falls—and then his wings snap down in a powerful beat and he's rising up._

 _He's flying. He's really fucking **flying.**_

 _Summer hovers nearby, always the overprotective one, but for once, there's no need. He's really doing it this time. He's actually keeping himself up in the air._

 _Far down on the ground below, Rick raises his fists to the sky and cheers._

.

Morty drops to the floor in a flop that's beginning to become a bit too familiar of an experience for him. His headphones are pulled from his ears by the sudden movement, coming to land several feet anyway from him, and the tinny music still playing on them is so faint that his mind begins to clear.

The headphones are both a hindrance and his safety net. They keep him from wandering off somewhere at nearly two in the morning, but they also make it difficult for him to listen to more than a few songs at a time. He wishes he could just sit there and watch the visions play out, enjoy the ones that are actually rather nice, but his body seems to have other plans in mind, completely incapable of staying still for any period of time.

He draws his arms down to his sides from where they'd been stretched above his head, and from the simple movement alone, has to take a moment to breath as he pieces himself back together again.

These are his arms, pins and needles fading away to the texture of his carpet. These are his legs, too stiff and awkwardly sprawled out, the pant legs of his pajama bottoms pulled up to his knees—his back bent over the bottom wheels of his rolling computer chair, his heart thudding in his chest, the air in his lungs, his hair messy from sleep with brown locks brushing against his forehead, all the aches and pains that come from having a body that's taken a beating—it's all real and it's all him. No wings, no muteness, no drug addiction or anything else from any of the other visions.

Including no Rick.

Morty reaches for the headphones, and for the rest of the early hours of the morning, the pattern repeats itself. Listen to a few songs, take a brief reprieve from his life to absorb himself in the visions, the good outweighing the bad, and then be snapped back to reality. Breathe and coalesce back into a single being, into himself. And then reach for the headphones to do it all over again.

.

 _He's on a road trip across the universe; simple and easy compared to back home._

 _._

 _He's some alien's pet. He doesn't know what freedom is._

 _._

 _He's learning to hunt, paws prowling the ground for monsters._

 _._

 _She's fourteen when she changes her name and gets to try on a dress for the first time._

 _._

 _The snakebite doesn't even hurt. He's just shocked more than anything, shocked and then falling to his knees._

 _._

And in nearly every single vision, Rick's there, or at least he's around. In the visions, when Morty thinks of Rick, it's not with this sense of abandonment.

.

 _He's twenty-seven when Rick throws him a surprise bachelor party. It's as mentally scarring and spectacular as he always thought it'd be._

 _._

 _His fangs don't come in right, so he has to get surgery. He's high on the pain meds for a good twenty-four hours, and when that runs out, Rick gives him pot._

 _._

 _When she punches out a kid at school for snapping her bra strap, Rick takes her out for ice cream and a movie._

 _._

Popping Tylenol pills in between every other episode and slurping down can after can of soda, he reaches for the headphones again and again—losing himself, but just for today. Just for today and then when school starts tomorrow, he'll stop.

He'll stop.

 **_Stop._ **

_._

* * *

.

It's 6:23AM and Morty's clutching at the toilet and shaking apart at the seams as his body tries to expel everything he's eaten for the past few days. There goes dinner, there goes the ice cream and all that soda—the side of his face pressed against the toilet seat, a string of drool hanging from his open mouth as he tries not to breathe in that lovely toilet bowl scent—he shudders, his stomach turning, and shuts his eyes with a groan, tucking his face into one arm as he flushes the toilet.

Leave him to be in this misery, for he has made a great many mistakes—not the least of which is poking at the equivalent of a mental scab until it breaks open and bleeds all over the place.

"Morty?"

It's Summer, back from whatever she had been doing. She speaks quietly due to the early hour of the morning, but if Mom and Dad hadn't heard him throwing up, they probably wouldn't be woken up by her talking.

He hadn't had the chance to shut the door when he'd been racing for the bathroom, so he's easy to spot from the hallway, and Summer walks right in without waiting for any real response from him. She turns on the lights before he can tell her not to, and he can make out the faint _click_ of the door closing behind herself, shutting them both in.

"Don't tell me you actually got drunk," she says, rustling around in the linen closet for something. She turns on the faucet for a brief moment, and the next thing he knows, a cool, damp washcloth is being laid against the back of his neck.

He sighs, tension going out of him just a bit.

"Thanks," he murmurs. "And no, not drunk. Just not f-feeling well."

She hums, says, "That doctor's note was only for Thursday and Friday."

"I—I'll be okay for tomorrow," he tells her, shifting up just a bit so that he can look back at her. She has a pinched expression on her face. Morty would almost call it concern.

As he looks at her, those same dark clothes from the last time she went out, black with blue splatters, and this time accompanied by dark smudges of paint on her face, he's reminded of the very last vision he had that morning—being so much younger and hiding under some floorboards with Summer as Rick leads a swarm of Federation soldiers away; curled up against Summer's side, that feeling of fear when a second patrol group came looking for them and Rick still hadn't come back. Then those false floorboards being pulled up, clawed hands ripping them out of their hiding place, and all the screaming that followed…

The vision had been an outcome so very different from a few days ago, when they hid in the trash with only a blanket to cover them, and he can't help but wonder _why;_ why had that been enough to save them.

His hand curling against his stomach in an attempt to sooth the nausea, Morty looks at Summer with half-lidded eyes and quietly asks, "Summer… why didn't the—the patrol find us in that dumpster?"

In the grand scheme of things, it's such a small detail, but it digs at him just like every other question that's been floating around in his head these past several days.

Summer sighs, runs a hand through her messy hair and pulls out her ponytail. She sounds annoyed—annoyed but also tired when she says, "Morty, I don't want you involved. And I'm not supposed to talk about any of that with you anyway."

"I'm not ask-asking you about tonight." Though he does want to. He wants to know what she's been doing and everything she's getting involved with. He'll let that go for now though if she'll just tell him this. "J-just asking about the dumpster."

She stares at him for a moment, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. It's not the look of someone willing to share. He's almost positive she'll say no, give some excuse again about keeping him uninvolved, and then he really will have to let it go for the night, because he just doesn't have the energy to keep pestering her.

It seems Summer doesn't have much energy to keep fighting him on this either. Her shoulders slump and she shuts her eyes, taking a seat on the tiles next to him with her back up against the wall.

"You can't tell anyone," she says, voice quiet. "This isn't information to be spreading around."

He blinks at her sleepily, sits up just a bit more and says, "Y-yeah, of course."

She sighs again, presses her head back against the wall and pulls her knees up to her chest. With her eyes to the ceiling, she explains it all to him, or at least as much as she knows on the matter.

"The blue and black, the dark clothes and the blanket, it's like a camouflage," she says, "Those bug faces don't see certain shades of blue on the color spectrum, and when it's combined with black, it creates this kind of optical illusion that makes them blind to us." She shrugs, waving one hand in the air, "Or something like that. I don't get all the science and details behind it, I just know it works."

Shades on the color spectrum—and his mind falls back to the paper he found in his room, the report with so many complicated words written about color, so far beyond Morty's understanding, but even not knowing exactly what the paper had been talking about, the connection is easy to see.

"H-how'd you figure that out?"

"It… it was already known in the group when I joined," Summer admits. She looks uncomfortable, her sense of loyalty to this group warring with whatever familial connection she feels for Morty. After a long stretch of silence, she hesitantly adds, "Tyler, he, um… knows a lot about this stuff."

Sir, yes sir, Tyler. Head of the snake and leader of the pack.

Morty shouldn't prod, he knows—it's a shock that Summer even shared this much information with him—but he can't stop himself from asking anyway, "And who exactly is this Tyler?"

She stares at him for a moment, her mouth pressed into a tight frown, and then she's standing back up and holding a hand out to him, says "Come on, you should brush your teeth before you go back to sleep. I'll help you get settled."

Morty takes her hand and lets the subject drop for now.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

 **.**

The best way to cover up bruises is to start with green and yellow concealer. Yellow goes over anything that's blue—the blue shades smudged across his forehead—and green covers up any red that's left over—the flecks of red on his face, the flushed outer edge of any bruise. If it's purple, you kind of blend the concealer based on what shade of purple it is. Reddish-purple? Go with green. Blueish-purple? Go with yellow. The contrasting colors cancel each other out, and the end results look like a heavy make-out session gone wrong with a Green Bay Packers fan.

This is only step one though, and once the green and yellow concealer dry and are pretty adequately covering the bruise, you can move on to step two. Step two is to apply a third concealer, one that matches up to your real skin-tone as closely as possible. It's all about the layering after all. You dab it over the green and yellow and smudge it into the unmarked parts of your skin until all that's left is a seamlessly blended natural flesh-tone. Dust it lightly with some matte foundation powder and you're good to go.

Morty knows all of this now because Mom and Summer got him up at an ungodly hour of the morning to 'get his face ready' before he had to leave for school. He wasn't given much choice in the matter because they ganged up on him, but when he looks into the mirror now, he has to admit that the results are pretty well done. They left the bruise over his eye alone because he'd already been seen around school like that, but as for everything else, he looks completely healed. Someone would have to be looking pretty closely to notice anything off at all, and Morty's always kind of flown under the radar as one of the school's unpopular outcast losers, so for once, that works in his favor.

"Why do you guys know so much about hiding bruises," he asks, one hand hovering over his face, but not actually touching it or else Summer will smack him again and bitch about him ruining their hard work.

"Hickies are bruises," Mom says with a simple shrug, which is true, but not something he really wants to be thinking about when it comes to his mom and sister. Morty looks at them both in the mirror and cringes, his nose scrunched up.

"Ew, gross, guys."

"Oh, please," Summer rolls her eyes, ruffling a hand through his hair teasingly before she pushes him away from the mirror so that she can get started on getting _herself_ ready for the day. "Like you're a symbol of purity. Grow up."

Mom clasps her hands on his shoulders, the smile on her face not quite reaching her eyes when she says, "Why don't you go finish getting ready for school. The bus will be here soon."

He can tell that she's worried about him, wants to keep him close and safe for as long as possible, her hands clinging, squeezing his shoulders tight before she gently pushes him out the bathroom door and in the direction of his room. He wonders just how much she knows about the car chase, how much Summer told her about that night. There's no time to dwell on it now though. He still needs to get dressed and eat a quick breakfast before catching the bus; focus on just getting through his first day back at school—hope it doesn't rain and make sure to stay away from the automatic mist benches in the greenhouse. All that makeup running is the last thing he needs.

He makes sure to slip into his parents' room to grab a spare pair of earplugs from the value pack his dad bought. From now on, he'll be accessorizing with florescent pink and orange.

.

* * *

.

The timer's set at thirty minutes and starts ticking down.

Morty's welcomed back with the same lackluster disregard his classmates usually give him, it's like he never left in the first place. In fact, if it wasn't for Greg Swartz giving him a look of derision at the start of first session and saying _'Knew your dumb ass didn't test out,'_ he'd think they hadn't even noticed him missing at all.

It's the English/Literature portion of first session and their teacher speed-walks into the room a flustered mess. Ms. Marcy. She sets her bag down on the desk—not _her_ desk, or _anyone's_ desk, just _the_ desk—and pulls out her notebook and a copy of _The Outsiders Federation Edition,_ all the while saying "Sorry, sorry, got held up at my last class," rambling out a number of excuses before she stops and stares at them all and seems to realize that as the teacher and authority figure of the classroom, she owes them no apology or explanation.

She's very young and new to the school; probably fresh out of college with a teaching degree before the Federation came and implemented all those changes to the education system. The last of a dying generation, smudged out in the face of the Federation's 'brighter future.'

Twenty-eight minutes.

Ms. Marcy clears her throat and tells them to open their books to where they last left off, picking a student at random to start reading—Craig, who reads through the scene in a rushed monotone. The oddly-named Ponyboy character is on his way to the park with Johnny. It's night time in the book, and Pony had just run off after being hit by his brother. Pony's first instinct had been to run away, start up a new, better life, but Johnny convinced him to stick around and cool off a bit.

Morty taps his pen against his notebook and scribbles down a few random notes as Craig reads through the chapter—Pony and Johnny hanging out at the park talking, smoking cigarettes. Two random rich kids walking by Pony and Johnny in the park, the strangers just having a good time, and then a fight that seems to come out of nowhere—but maybe Morty just wasn't paying close-enough attention—something to do with a deep-seated jealousy Johnny holds for the better lives the rich kids lead—

"Wait," Ms. Marcy says, cutting Craig off mid-sentence. Her brow is furrowed, arms crossed tightly over her chest, "That isn't right."

She grabs her copy of the book off the desk and flips it open, her eyes flicking back and forth across the pages as she reads. The class watches her, bored and uncomprehending, and Morty glances over at the timer on the wall next to the clock.

Fourteen minutes.

Ms. Marcy frowns, flips a few pages ahead and says, more to herself than to them it seems, "No, no, no. That's—that's wrong. Where's the drowning in the fountain scene? The reason for it all? Johnny's a mild-mannered character, he wouldn't just—"

"Ms. Marcy?" a boy from up front cautiously asks, half raising his hand in the air like he's not sure if he should or not.

"It was self-defense!" Ms. Marcy cries out, the book held so tightly in both hands that it looks as if she might just rip it in two. "In the book, the _original_ book, the Soc— _socials—_ started the fight. They were drunk and were drowning Pony in the fountain, that's why Johnny stabbed one of them. Not because of jealousy, of a want for what they have in life." She flails her arms out, the pages of the book fanning out as she waves it in the air. All around Morty, his classmates go tense in their seats, and one kid in the back even pulls out his cellphone to start recording. It'll be up on YouTube likely before First Session even ends, but Ms. Marcy hardly seems to notice.

And the timer keeps ticking down.

Twelve minutes.

"They can't just change the book this drastically!" she shouts, and around Morty, some of his classmates jump in their seats. Others lean back like they want to distance themselves as much as possible from the scene, and everyone exchanges a variety of looks. Panic, amusement, and disbelief. Ms. Marcy turns her attention back to the book, flips past another good chunk of pages so that she's closer to the end, saying, " _What else did they change?"_

The book's not one Morty has read before, Federation edition or otherwise, so he doesn't exactly understand what she's saying plot-wise. Regardless of that though, he gets the basic gist of what she's ranting about. The Federation has apparently changed the contents of the book, edited and censored it and added in whatever they wanted. None of it really surprises him, it all just seems par for the course with the Federation, but apparently to his teacher, it's a pretty big deal.

Ten minutes.

She reaches the last page and just… stops.

There's a pause, and when she does finally speak, it's with a detached tone, as monotonous as Craig reading out the chapter they'd been on, "Ponyboy realizes that he could have gone on to do better things—" She flips back and forth between passages in the book. "—that his family's just holding him back with their bias over the _Socials,_ and it's because of that bias that he got injured enough where he couldn't make it into a higher education program."

From behind Morty, one of his classmates whispers humorously, " _Spoilers._ "

Ms. Marcy laughs with just a tinge of hysteria, and she drops the book on the ground with a noisy _slap_ against the tiles. Rubbing at her eyes, like she can feel a headache coming on, she tells them all to close their books.

"Throw them on the ground even!" she says, and after a few hesitant looks are exchanged around the classroom, they comply. Book after book is dropped to the ground, some spiked like a football and others sent sailing across the room and hitting the wall as some of his classmates really get into it. A girl in the back manages to throw hers into the trash can up front and several students around her shout out _"Goal!"_

Morty stares down at his own book, at the tiny script written under the title that says _Federation Edition_ ; yet another tiny change to their culture, little fragments chipped away one at a time so that the eventual assimilation into the Galactic Federation isn't as jarringly obvious. He tosses his book away from him, watches it skid down the aisle.

Leaning back against the desk with her hands splayed out over the edge and gripping tight, Ms. Marcy lets out a long breath and her shoulders slump. Wisps of flyaway hair hang over her eyes, her once pressed shirt wrinkled with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Despite her frazzled appearance though, she looks a bit more… together, like the sight of all those altered books being tossed was a kind of therapy for her.

She drums her fingers against the desk, and when she speaks, she almost sounds like she's giving them a normal, everyday lecture.

"What they changed, that's not the original message of the book," she says, her words calm and collect. " _The Outsiders_ is about family and brotherly love, and it's about how things aren't so black and white in life. The class system in the book, _greasers_ and _socials,_ ultimately don't matter, _shouldn't matter,_ because regardless of what side the characters are on, they're not that different from one-another. They all have hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes."

Five minutes.

"How much money you make," she says, "whether you're on the poverty line or not, it doesn't determine who you are as a person, it doesn't make you better or worse, good or bad." She frowns, glares down at the floor. "The same goes for whether you test as an _elite_ or not."

Ms. Marcy looks up at them all, her gaze traveling around the classroom, staring each and every one of them in the eye.

"You are not just small cogs in the Federation's machine," she tells them.

Her eyes dart over to the door, like she's expecting someone to walk through it any minute and remove her from the classroom.

 _"Two minutes,"_ a mechanized voice announces from the timer—the same Xanax Siri voice from the detention recordings.

Ms. Marcy shakes her head, her lips pressed together in a tight line. She runs a hand stressfully through her hair, making herself look even more weary and unkempt, and then she turns on her heel, bites out a quick "I can't work like this," and leaves.

There's silence in the room.

For about ten seconds.

And then everyone pulls out their smartphones to kill time until the next teacher arrives, as if none of that had even happened. Sure, some of Morty's classmates look a little rattled, a little contemplative, but for the most part, the rest seem disinterested, the message having passed over their heads. Morty sighs and stuffs his earplugs in just in case anyone decides to play music, and then he rests his head on his arms sideways, one eye still on the clock, and waits for the next teacher.

Just another normal school day under the Federation's new system, teachers trying their hardest until they break down and give up. In most cases, they'll be back in the next day and care a little less, not try as much as they did before. Sometimes they'll come back in and try even _harder,_ but Morty's noticed that eventually the system beats them down. They'll either quit or they'll show up just to put in the hours to get their paycheck.

Morty wonders which way Ms. Marcy will go, if she'll even be back the next day. She seems like the type to keep trying harder; maybe she'll even break the cycle for once.

The timer ticks down to zero.

Faintly, Morty can hear a bell ring, alerting all teachers of the subject change as if the timer isn't enough of an indicator. Thankfully, the noise doesn't set him off; school would have been rather difficult otherwise.

The timer resets to five minutes and starts counting down, just enough time for their next teacher to show up and for them to flip to the right section of what Morty likes to call their ' _Earth Studies'_ binder—Math, Science, History and English all squashed into one. The five minutes is also when they're supposed to grab the right textbook from the piles by the windows, but they have Math next, so none of them even bother to get up from their seats (or put their phones away for that matter).

At the four minute mark, Ms. Grensly comes lumbering in, looking as heavily pregnant as the last time Morty saw her, with her small inflatable donut pillow in hand, and a student trailing behind her carrying the rest of her things for her—an older boy Morty recognizes from the Culinary Arts shop. Ronnie Moore. Rumor has it, he's teamed up with a senior from Morty's shop and the two are selling pot brownies on the side. Ronnie collects hall passes like they're baseball cards, doing little favors like this for the teachers—but only for the human ones. The general consensus among the Junior and Senior class, so close to graduating and moving on to bigger and better things at the time that the Federation arrived, is that all bug faces can fuck off.

Morty sits back up in his seat, pulling out the earplugs and tucking them away in his pocket for later. He rests his chin on one hand with a sigh and waits for class to start, or Ms. Grensly's version of it anyway. Math is his last subject for first session before second session starts.

While Ms. Grensly gets herself situation in the rolling desk chair, Ronnie sets her stuff out for her on the desk, all nice and neat; her water bottle and the bag of chips she brought as a snack for the day, her purse and book bag, and he finishes it all off with a charming smile as he passes her the remote to the flat screen TV hanging in the corner of the classroom. Morty doesn't know how he does it, be that confident around the teachers, especially when they're all clearly aware of Ronnie's little side-business and the real reason he wants all those hall passes.

Ms. Grensly rolls her eyes, says blandly, "Thank you, Mr. Moore," as she writes out the hall pass. She hands it over to him like a folded twenty pressed between two fingers and then waves him away with a bored, "Now get to class or whatever."

Ronnie pockets the card quick and leaves the room with a two-fingered salute back at them all, the door clicking shut behind him.

When the last warning bell rings, the timer resets itself to thirty minutes and starts counting down again.

Ms. Grensly spins her chair around to face them, shamelessly shifting in place on top of her inflatable donut pillow, the vinyl squeaking beneath her, until she deems her position suitably comfortable. She spots the things Ms. Marcy left on the desk a moment later.

"Why'd Ms. Marcy leave all her crap here?" she asks, eyebrow raised.

One of Morty's classmates up front raises her hand and explains with all the exuberance of someone who loves gossip, "She totally freaked out over this book we were reading and then just, like, _left._ "

"Ah, well, happens to us all eventually," Ms. Grensly says, completely dismissive and utterly unsurprised by the news of Ms. Marcy's breakdown. Clapping her hands together, she immediately moves on with an enthusiastic, " _So,_ who's ready to learn some trigonometry?"

Everyone stares in disbelief, but before anyone even has a chance to work up a real response, Ms. Grensly laughs and waves a hand at them, saying, "Just kidding! Ha. Today I was thinking we'd watch _Numb3rs._ That's technically about math—better math than you'll ever learn here."

Flipping the TV on with the remote, Ms. Grensly recruits a girl from the front row to grab the DVD from her book bag and get it all set up and playing. About half the class goes back to their phones, and Ms. Grensly opens her bag of chips and turns her attention completely to the TV.

Morty rests his head on his desk and decides to get a quick powernap in before his next session.

.

* * *

.

The spiky seeds he planted several days ago have sprouted, tiny blue nubs just barely poking through the slimy soil, but that's not what they're working on in shop for the day. A shipment of plants came in during their second session, and while the group of Juniors before them took care of the task of unloading everything from the truck and unpacking it all—much harder than it sounds considering the alien nature of all the plants—it was their job now to take cuttings from a few of those plants.

Despite the wild appearance of some of the alien plant species, a lot of them functioned in the same way as Earth plants, so for many of them, the same methods could be used. Plant cuttings for example. Morty had already done it once before and it hadn't been too difficult of a process. You find a healthy looking branch that's a few inches long and cut it off the plant, then you clip the leaves off the lower half of the shoot so that you have a length of bare stem to work with. Dip that end of the stem into whatever rooting hormone the teacher tells you to use—apparently different alien plants require different types of hormones—and finally you plant your cutting into whatever potting soil is required. Eventually, the cutting will grow roots and grow into a whole new plant. It's like cloning, but simpler, and without all the ethical dilemmas.

That is to say, it _had_ been simple when it was just a regular Earth plant they'd been practicing the method on. A semi-mobile plant species from the _Faswora_ galaxy though? Much more difficult.

The orange and purple branches curl around Morty's fingers every time he fishes through the growth for a good cutting, tiny sticky fibers gluing to his skin, and he swears the plant _flinches_ and lets out a little shriek whenever he actually cuts off a branch—like tiny Whos down in Whoville crying out _'We're here! We're here!'_

Morty snips off the extra growth on the lower part of the cutting—he wouldn't exactly call it _leaves,_ but the concept is the same—dips the end of the stem into a green growth hormone, and then has to pry those sticky fibers off his fingers, a slow process if one doesn't want to damage the cutting, before he can finally plant it into the sandy soil mix piled up in one of the many pots

It becomes a repetitive process, the same thing over and over again—clip, snip, dip, pry and plant—but if he keeps his back to the clock up on the wall, he can lose himself in the monotony of it and the time will go by faster. Every four cuttings, he'll carry the pots out to their designated bench in the greenhouse just for something different to do, weaving around all his classmates doing the exact same thing, and on his way back in, he'll glance over at the little blue sprout nubs he'd planted, wondering just what they'll grow into.

Altogether, he and his classmates fill two benches with all the cuttings, and then they're down to their last half hour of the school day and their instructor's calling them back into the classroom area—a room with several long tables facing a white board to sit at, and extra chairs lining three of the walls. There's always a stack of different plant magazines on each table for them to read from for about ten minutes, and for the last twenty minutes of every day, a couple students are picked at random to give a brief oral report on whatever article they read—so, you know, _no pressure or anything._

It's not always so bad. Sometimes the articles can actually be pretty interesting. The galaxy's a big place and there's a shit-ton of variety among all the different plants out there. Once you can wrap your head around the fact that not all plants need sunlight or carbon dioxide to survive or use photosynthesis to feed, the sky's the limit— _literally_ the sky's the limit, because apparently there are alien plants that grow floating in the air or even in the vacuum of space; he's found that the possibilities are beyond comprehension.

Morty grabs a magazine at random, something with a picture of speckled cube-like fruit on the cover, when he's stopped before he can take a seat. One of his horticulture instructors steps into his path—L'Sazhent, whose name none of them can quite pronounce right, so they all call him L-Zazz instead. Suprisingly, the insectoid is okay with it; he acts like one of those dads who's trying to be a 'cool kid,' using lingo that's way outdated. It took Morty and his classmates a while to realize that the alien _wasn't_ mocking them.

"Mr. Smith," the alien says, jubilant, and he points his claws at Morty in a way that could be an attempt at the 'finger guns' gesture. "You're needed in the counselor's office. They need to speak with you about something, you dig?"

Morty's heart drops into his stomach, because when has being called into the counselor's office ever been good news? What can they possibly want to talk to him about, and especially now, after the crazy couple of days he'd had last week? Do they suspect something? Did the makeup wipe off without him realizing? It's not exactly like he can rub his hand across his face to check.

"Sorry, broseph," L-Zazz says with an overly exaggerated shrug, and by now the interruption has been notice. All Morty's classmates are watching him. L-Zazz goes to rest a claw on Morty's shoulder, and it takes everything inside of him to not flinch away. "You'll have to miss our _rad_ plant jam-sesh today, but you can catch the next one tomorrow."

"Y-yeah, okay," Morty manages to force the words out in a relatively calm tone. "Guess I should bring all my st-stuff then? R-right, okay."

Take a breath. Relax.

 _It's all right._

All eyes are on him as he leaves the classroom, and Morty just knows this'll be spread through the school's grapevine before the last bell rings, transformed into a monstrous beast of speculation. He drags his feet at going to his locker to grab his backpack and coat, but he can only stall for so long and before he knows it, he's slinking in to the guidance counselor's office. Head down and shoulder's hunched, he plays the death march in his head and wonders what kind of vision that would bring.

"Mr. Smith, you can head right on in," the secretary says, only briefly glancing up from her computer before she gestures over to one of three doors. "Mr—I mean," she shuts her eyes briefly, corrects herself, " _Lr._ T'Vorinar is expecting you."

Lr—what does that even mean?— _Lr._

It says the same thing on the door though.

 _Lr. Gora T'Vorinar_

 _*Federation Certified*_

 _Human Child Counselor_

Both habit and a delay of the inevitable has Morty knock on the door first, but he's called in a second later, his heart pounding in his chest. The thing about Federation officials, with their insectoid faces, is that their emotions are hard to read, at least for humans like himself. You can't tell if they're smiling or not, so when this Lr. T'Vorinar… _individual_ looks up at Morty, he doesn't know how to judge the situation; if it's a good one, a bad one, if he's in trouble or not.

When Morty sits down in front of the desk, he tries to keep his face blank, not let anything show through that might give away more information than he wants too. Subtly, he wipes sweaty palms on his pants, looks the insectoid right in the eye and calmly asks, "You w-wanted to see me?"

"Yes, Mr. Smith, just needed to pass on some information specific to your case and give you a form for your parents to sign," Lr. T'Vorinar says with a wave of one claw, all just business as usual for him it seems. "It's—how shall you say—'not a big deal,' so don't worry."

"Okay," Morty says slowly. "What's the information? And… w-what do you mean by m-my _case?_ "

"You see, Mr. Smith," Lr. T'Vorinar says, claws folded in front of him, "Now that the new education system is more established, and all the students here are more settled, the Federation will be adding a new learning program for students."

"L-like a new class?"

"Not exactly," Lr. T'Vorinar shakes his head, and goes on to explain, "The Federation believes that not all learning can be done in a classroom. Students need a more hands-on experience to fully understand their chosen careers, humans _especially,_ so starting next week, on a regular basis, all students will be taken on educational trips to locations that fit their area of study—many of which are off-world."

"You mean f-field trips?"

"If you want to dumb it down, then yes."

Morty feels himself relax just a tiny bit, his heart rate slowing to a more reasonable pace. Is that all this is then? An announcement about upcoming field trips? At first he wonders why he had to come to the guidance counselor's office directly to hear about it, but then he realizes that this announcement must have been made while he was absent, and the councilor's probably just catching him up on everything. The form for his parents to sign must be a permission slip. It's strange that he didn't hear his classmates talking about it, but maybe he just hadn't been listening at the right times. He has been wearing his earplugs off and on all day long.

"S-sso this is just about getting my parents to sign my per-permission slip then?" Morty says, just to confirm. A small smile creeps up on his face, and he quietly remarks, "It does sound fun."

Field trips to other planets? It'd almost be like going on adventures with Rick again, just more orderly, educational, and in his particular case, plant-specific. There… would be no Rick, of course… but still, it could be fun, something different, a change from the usual repetition of his day-to-day life.

And then Lr. T'Vorinar says, "You misunderstand me, Mr. Smith. I called you into my office today due to the… _unique circumstances_ surrounding your particular case."

"Th-there's that term a-aagain, _'my case.'_ What do you mean by ' _m-my case'?"_

"Presently, all of your classmates are being given permission slips for their parents or guardians to sign so that they may go on these trips, yes," Lr. T'Vorinar says, buggy red eyes wide and staring. Morty shifts uncomfortably under the gaze, but refuses to look away. Tapping a claw on the desk, Lr. T'Vorinar goes on to explain, " _However,_ due to your… _colorful_ records, you will not be receiving a permission slip yourself. I suppose you could say that you're on the Federation's equivalent of the 'no fly' list. You will not be allowed on any school trips off planet, or for that matter allowed on any other trip off planet for the foreseeable future."

Lr. T'Vorinar slides a paper across his desk to Morty, a simple letter with a space down at the bottom for both of his parents to sign.

"This is simply a letter explaining the situation to your parents," he says, and in a tone like none of this is that big of a deal at all. "You'll need to have them sign it confirming that they've read it and then bring it back to me so that I may put it in your records."

Morty takes the paper and stares down at it, his eyes skimming over the typed words without fully taking it all in—' _To Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' _and ' _pertinent information regarding your son'_ and ' _we regret to inform you…'_

Dismissive, uncaring words break through the fog, "Well, that's all I needed to discuss with you, so—"

"What's the point?" Morty cuts the counselor off, his words dull and listless. "W-w-wwhy even teach me all of this alien p-plant stuff if I'm never going to—to leave this planet?"

"There are many students in your class, Mr. Smith," Lr. T'Vorinar points out, mild irritation creeping into his voice. "The classes are for everyone. They're not specifically catered to you."

Morty sets the letter down on his lap, flattens his hands over it and looks up at the counselor, just stares at him for a moment—because where's his guidance in all this? Where's any sort of advice on what he can do?

Lr. T'Vorinar awkwardly clears his throat, says, "I understand that your circumstances are… rather unusual. This isn't something that really happens in the Federation, so I'm sorry to say that we don't exactly have a procedure in place here for this sort of thing."

"You mean because normally someone with my record would be in prison right now," Morty says, a kind of weariness creeping in, "And if they're not, they're usually not young enough to still be in grade school."

Unsurprisingly, Lr. T'Vorinar has no real response to that.

"Should I even try at all?" Morty asks, and there's almost a hint of pleading in his voice when he does.

Tapping his claws against the desk again, perhaps a nervous gesture, Lr. T'Vorinar finally says, "Mr. Smith, your Earth is still a big place. The Federation will always have new jobs available for assignment, and I'm sure there will be some way the skills you learn now can be applied even here." And at this point the insectoid leans forward, as if he's trying to be comforting, but to Morty, it only feels like the Federation looming above him. "Finish out High School as you normally would. Enjoy this time with your friends, and learn a bit more about yourself in the process. You'll figure it out over time."

Words of wisdom— _yes,_ thank you Dr. Phil.

"Can I go now?" Morty asks, his eyes dropped to his lap, the letter crinkled up in fisted hands. He wonders if he tries hard enough, he could fold a paper crane.

"Yes, you're excused," Lr. T'Vorinar says, sounding relieved to end the meeting.

Morty stands up without another word and leaves the office, the letter crunched up in one hand with his coat stuffed under his arm and his backpack dragging along the ground behind him. The hallways are quiet and empty and according to the timers and clocks, there's still ten minutes left to the day before everyone swarms out to the buses—which means that his meeting with the counselor had only been about fifteen minutes long.

Just fifteen minutes.

Fifteen fucking minutes for an invisible ankle monitor to be locked around him forever, blowing a hole in what he had thought his future might be and chaining him to a planet that has suddenly never felt so small.

He should go back to shop, maybe catch the tail-end of one of his classmates' reports—but then does that even matter? Does anything he might learn from that report or from the lessons in shop really, truly matter when practically none of it will apply to him, to his _circumstances,_ to his _case?_

 _'You didn't even like this career path,'_ Morty tells himself. ' _Why are you so upset?'_

But he just can't forget that brief feeling he got at the start of his meeting with the guidance counselor, that tiny spark of excitement at being able to visit other planets, even if it was just all about plants, even if he may one day end up doing hard labor on some alien farm on a planet he's never been to—just the fact that he'd get to go out there again, out into the universe, seeing new and exciting things beyond compare to anything on Earth. _Different things. A change—_ he can't deny it anymore that he misses it so much, he misses all those crazy, amazing things that he got to do.

Things that he would never do again.

Because he's never leaving Earth.

And if he never leaves Earth, he'll never have a chance of maybe finding Rick again, because Rick _definitely_ won't _ever_ be coming back here—and jesus, Morty can't believe there had even still been a part of him that still thought there was a chance in hell of him finding Rick again.

 _'I'll be here forever,'_ he thinks. _'I'll die on this rock.'_

And he'll never visit the stars again.

And he'll never, ever see Rick again.

Morty's footsteps don't quite seem to be connecting with the tiles on the ground as he drifts down the hall, and suddenly the school seems entirely too hot for him. Even the gusts of air he's sucking into his lungs are too heated, too sweltering, burning up his lungs so that he doesn't seem to be getting any air at all. He wants—no, _needs_ out, but all the exits are too far away, and the hallways are getting too narrow, jerking and twisting around him, cutting off his path and blocking him in.

There's no way out and he's stuck. Stuck here forever.

He's freaking out and everyone's going to be leaving class soon and _see_ him freaking out.

Hands slamming against a door, Morty pushes his way into one of the unisex handicap bathrooms and immediately locks the door behind him. Dumping his things by the door, he stumbles over to one of the walls and presses his back against it, trying to will the chilled cement to suck all of the heat out of him. Feet pushing at an angle against the floor, pressing himself against the wall as tightly as he can, Morty sucks in a couple of deep, shaking breaths—but jesus, it's just still too hot.

Glancing over at the door just to confirm that it is in fact locked, Morty pulls off his shirt and drops that on the ground too. He walks on unsteady feet over to the sink and flips it onto cold, cupping his hands under the running water to splash some of it on his face. It drips down his neck and his chest and gets his hair wet, but he just doesn't care. He dips his hands back under the running water, holds them there until they're freezing cold and them presses them against the hottest parts of his body like an icepack; around his neck, up against his chest over his heart and lungs, palms flattened over flushed cheeks, and then stretching around to whatever part of his back he can reach.

Slowly, the air comes a bit easier to him, a bit cooler.

And that's when the tears start to fall.

It's not a full-out flood, he's not fucking bawling, but it trickles down his cheeks in little trailing drops; dripping off his chin and curving towards his lips with the taste of salt and something chalky—and that's when he finally looks up at the mirror and sees that all his makeup is running, tan and yellow and green painting his face in diluted smears as all the tiny healing cuts and the bruise across his forehead reappear.

Morty forces his lips to stretch out into a wide grin and tearfully says, " _HA!"_ He presses a finger against the mirror, against his reflection, says, "Ha, l-look at you, you—you're a hot mess, Morty Smith. Ha _ha,_ so funny! Y-you—clearly you do _not_ have all your shit together. Y-you're shit is allll over the place. It's-it's all over the floor, _yes. Y-yes it is._ "

He presses his hands over his eyes, whispers out, " _Jesus, w-what—"_

Sucking in another few breaths, he tries to calm himself down, and then his hands drop down to his sides, hanging there limp as he stares into the mirror, stares at his utterly pathetic reflection, the long bruise across his chest from the seat-belt, the occasional bandage scattered across his torso and plastered on his arm. For a moment, Morty presses his lips tightly together, face pinched and brow furrowing.

And he says firmly, "He's gone."

The tears try to well up again, but Morty squints his eyes to keep them from falling.

"Rick's gone and h-he's not—he's _never_ coming back," the words rasp in his throat, but he pushes them out, stays as steady and strong as he possibly can.

"I w-will never see R-Rrick again."

Briefly, his face screws up in pain and sorrow, but he shuts his eyes tight and forces his expression to clear again.

Neutral, normal.

Totally normal.

Totally alright.

Morty opens his eyes again.

"That part of my life is over."

 _And I say, it's alright…_

His eyes fall to his backpack where his cellphone is tucked away, and Morty swallows thickly, sighs and says, "No, no, no, definitely not."

He folds his arms over the lip of the sink and leans against it, tucking his head down and shutting his eyes.

But it keeps echoing in his head— _here forever, here forever, and I'll never see Rick again._

Because he's gone.

He's gone.

Gone.

Gone.

Left somewhere without Morty, and with no apparent intention of ever coming back.

He looks over at his backpack again, his eyes flickering up briefly to the lock on the door.

One…

 _No._

Just one.

 _Definitely, definitely not._

Morty doesn't bother putting his shirt back on, just tucks himself into the far corner of the bathroom, opposite of the toilet, with his knees up to his chest and his cellphone clutched in both hands as he taps the music icon.

He'll just listen to one, and he knows exactly which one.

The guitar strums out a soothing tune and immediately Morty feels his body start to relax, muscles he didn't realize were so tense going loose.

 _Here comes the sun…_

 _Here comes the sun,_

 _And I say, it's alright—_

 _._

 _Rick opens his eyes and it's the happiest day of Morty's life. Everything had been so serious and the prognosis so abysmal for so long that he thought Rick would never wake up. The man grunts and groans and blinks sleepy eyes. He complains about the stitches and the shaved spot on his head that has only just barely started growing back hair—but it's all music to Morty's ears just seeing him awake, seeing him conscious and coherent again._

 _"J-jeez, kid, are you **crying?**_ _And what the fuck is with all these paper cranes?"_

.

Morty misses the bus. By the time he comes to, the school has mostly emptied out aside from faculty and staff and a few straggling students like himself. He calls Summer to come pick him up, and even though she gripes about it and how he's _totally cutting in on her day,_ she pulls up in front of the school to get him about ten minutes later.

He wordlessly throws his things into the backseat of the car, and when he asks her to keep the radio off once again, she gives him a weird look, but complies without complaint. She doesn't ask why his hair is damp or make any comment about the smeared makeup, just claps a gentle hand on his shoulder and pulls away from the curb.

They're about half-way home when Morty finally speaks up, staring down at the paper crane in his lap—something so nice created out of a letter so coldly cruel.

"I-iis that why you—you dropped out of college?" he quietly asks. "Because everyone around you, e-ee-even though you were all labeled as average or below average, th-they'd still be moving on to bigger and better things while you—you're just… stuck here on Earth… f-forever."

"Found out about that too, huh?"

"Yeah," Morty says with a shaky breath.

They stop at a red light and Summer drums her fingers against the steering wheel.

"Yeah," she eventually says. "Yeah, that was part of it."

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

.

Once in the morning and once at night before bed. That's the routine Morty works out. Never again at school because that's just too dangerous, but twice a day? That's nothing; no big deal at all. It's not even enough material to fill up a whole page in the notebook he's recording everything in. Twice a day and he doesn't make himself sick. The problem before had been a lack of moderation. You eat only two pieces of candy a day and it makes no difference, you get a sweet treat and have no need for worry of cavities or diabetes—eat a whole massive bag of candy though and you'll be curled up in a ball of misery and questioning all of your choices in life.

This is how drug addicts and alcoholics are born, he's sure, but he just can't find it in himself to care enough to stop. It's not a drug, it's a condition—and what does it matter anyway? It's not like it costs money. He won't be selling family heirlooms in the future, pawning off his dad's R2D2 coins just so he can get a quick fix. Just turn on the radio and this so-called 'high' is free.

And he's not hurting anyone either by doing this. Morty isn't even completely convinced he's hurting himself. When he keeps it to just two songs a day, there's no nausea, no headaches; there's a little wooziness, but it's brief—and afterwards he'd say he feels _almost happy_. Isn't it worth it for that alone?

Besides, life is so pointlessly miserable anyway, so what do the end results for this all even matter? When your future's completely sealed up and you're the only kid guaranteed to be Earth-bound for the rest of your life—under a kind of 'planet arrest' and being monitored by the Federation as a potential threat for an indefinite amount of time—you gotta take time to enjoy the little things in life, even if those little things involve purposely inducing seizure-like symptoms just to enjoy the unexplainable visions that follow.

This morning, Rick had taken him gem hunting. Not _his_ Rick, of course—in the vision, neither of them had been human. Morty can't say for sure what they'd been, certainly something he's never seen before, but they'd had claws and scales and spines and long flexible bodies with angular, canine faces that kind of reminded Morty of a seal. In the vision, when he blinked, it'd been with a transparent second eyelid, and when they'd spoken to each other, it'd been in crackles and whirs that at the time somehow made sense.

It's probably one of the most alien visions he's ever had so far, and yet it had all felt so normal when he'd been enveloped in the experience. Rick had pried off the slate tiling of the planet's surface to expose an opening to the chaotic environment beneath, and after some quickly crackled instructions from Rick, the two dove down into the electric fields below to hunt down jewel encrusted cephalopods.

Morty scribbles out the last few sentences of his journal entry for that morning, describing how Rick had dug his claws into the squid-like creature, pinning it in place by jabbing all the right nerve-endings and giving Morty enough time to swim close and pry off several gems embedded in the creature's body. At the time, he'd been filled with this sense of how important the task was, but when he thinks back on it now, he can't really remember any specific reason why they'd needed the gems.

Mom knocks on his door, her second reminder that morning for him to hurry up and get ready for school. Morty closes his notebook and tucks it beneath his mattress. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he grabs a candy bar from the stockpile he put together in his desk drawer and stuffs it into his mouth on his way out the door.

.

* * *

.

Second session, Federation Mandated Education—or how humanity's been doing everything wrong and the Galactic Federation has been doing everything right.

Today's extra special lesson is brought to you by the letter 'F' and the number 'seven-billion'—as in _seven-billion_ people have been _fucking_ everything up and need to sit down, shut up, and let the _Glorious Fucking Federation_ take the wheel before we drive our species into a ditch.

Of course, it's not all explicitly stated like that, but the implications are there.

So Morty sits there and keeps quiet and draws mustaches and monocles onto all the insectoid faces pictured in his textbook, and he keeps his eyes down and pretends that there isn't a giant bug monster looming at the front of the classroom and lecturing them about the changes that have been made to the voting process and why it's so much better.

"Say you have two good apples and three bad apples on a tree," the instructor, Crux Ati'Bleen explains—like, yes, she's really using apples as an example as if they're fucking kindergarteners. "And say those three bad apples vote for the destruction of the tree, while the two good apples vote to save it. Well, despite those three apples having the majority vote, it just wouldn't make sense to let them poison the tree due to close-minded ignorance, now would it?" It's not a real question, it never really is, and she waves a claw elegantly in the air as she concludes, "That's why their votes are worth less than the good apples."

"So, wait," a girl from a couple rows over says, her brow furrowed in confusion, "Are we the bad apples in this scenario, or the good apples?"

"You misunderstand me, child," Crux says, wings occasionally fluttering behind her, and then she tilts her head and says rather condescendingly, "It's okay. I shall explain further."

She begins slowly pacing up and down the aisles, claws folded behind her back with her head raised high, and when her wings flutter out, the breeze rustles the papers on everyone's desks.

"As you all know," she says, "it is now mandatory for every single human over the age of seventeen to vote on all the important matters that occur on your planet."

All the important matters that the Federation and the politicians they work with decide to even push forward for a planetary or country-specific vote. Yes, Morty's well aware. His parents are always receiving the informational packets in the mail on whatever subject they're required to drive over to the polls and vote on for that week. He skimmed through a couple of them the first few times they got them, but a lot of it went over his head as political mumbo-jumbo.

" _However,_ not every human is qualified to have an even say, and thus a _full_ vote, on every matter that passes through the polls," Crux says, and sounds very adamant about this fact. "Some of you are close-minded. Ignorant. It's not your fault, of course, as this is just how some of you were raised; a product of the environment you grew up in. Because of these shortcomings in certain subjects though, as a consequence, your vote will not be worth as much as someone with a full vote."

"And how do you decide that, huh?" a boy from the back row calls out, "How much my vote is worth?"

"Testing, of course," Crux says. "You will be asked questions on the matter. Your answers will determine how much your vote is worth, and it's all done digitally with our most advanced technology, so there will be no opportunity for someone to lie and cheat their way into a higher vote."

Morty bites down on his lip, and really, he does try to just sit there. He _tries_ to keep his mouth shut, because as he's learned over the past several months, being vocal about such things gets you all the wrong kinds of attention, and in many cases, _detention—_ but he just can't keep the words in, can't stop himself from saying, "Doesn't that just twist the results of—of the vote to whatever you w-want it to be?"

Crux turns to him, glides her way over to him with smooth steps and says, "Interesting theory, Mr. Smith. Would you care to explain further?"

And suddenly all eyes are on him, his classmates watching him like he's some kind of spectacle—a potential show about to happen, so grab your popcorn folks because Morty Smith is at it again—and he wonders why he always puts himself in these situations. If he's learned anything from the Harry Potter movies, it's that speaking out in Umbridge's class got the words _I must not tell lies_ cut into the back of your hand.

"Uhhhh…I—I mean…" he trails off, but there's no turning back now. Crux has her full attention on him, wide eyes staring down at him unblinkingly. She won't back off until he's explained himself, and so, rather reluctantly, Morty goes on to say, "I mean, if you want th-the vote to turn out a—a certain way, couldn't you just lower the worth of the oppo-opposition's vote? Y'know, mmm-make it so the decision you want is guaranteed to win?"

Her claws click behind her back and her postures straightens, wings flicking out once as she says, "I suppose I see your point, but that sounds like a very _human_ thing to do." She emphasizes the 'human' part with narrowed eyes, and then swiftly turns away from him, saying with a rather lofty tone, "Not the kind of corruption the Federation would be capable of."

"And we—we're just supposed to take your word for it?" Morty blurts out before he can stop himself, and when Crux turns back to him, he immediately wants to sink down and disappear into his desk.

"Yes," she says, voice cool, "that's what these classes are for, to show you that you can _trust_ the Federation. We only want what's best for your planet and your species, Mr. Smith."

Their 'species,' like they're an exotic animal at the zoo, so fascinating and entertaining to watch—but then, maybe that's all most of them really are to the Federation, the ones who aren't of an 'elite intellect.'

Cautiously, because the atmosphere in the classroom has quite clearly grown tense, a girl sitting three seats over from Morty speaks up, saying, "Yeah, Morty, I mean—it doesn't sound all that bad. Why would I want some racist or bigot or misogynist having the same value to their vote as I have?" She clears her throat, looks over at Crux who's now watching them both, and asks the instructor a bit unsurely, "That's what this is about, right? Like, why let someone who doesn't believe in global warming get a real vote on how to handle global warming?"

"You are correct," Crux says, wings flicking out. "That is one of the main reasons the voting process has been changed."

"B-b-but there are so many things that we've—we've been _wrong_ about in the past," Morty cuts in, hands fisting up on his textbook, "things that w-we didn't _realize_ are wrong until later, an-and then through change and voting, we fixed it. W-what if there's something we're wrong about ri-right now and we don't even know it? How can we change things i-i-if not everyone has an equal vote?"

It's not like he's trying to fight for all the racists assholes out there, he honestly couldn't care less about anyone like that, but there are just so many ways this could all be manipulated and warped into something terrible—and his classmates seem to just be eating it all up, nodding along in agreement.

"You're speaking of slavery, are you not?" Crux says. "And bigotry and racism and sexism?"

She has this look about her that Morty's beginning to recognize on all of the Federation officials he interacts with, the look of someone who's exasperated and irritated and tired of speaking to him, and Morty knows whatever she says next will be the end of this conversation.

"There is a flaw in your theory, Mr. Smith," she says. "You see, those are all _human_ things you're talking about, not something that's really a factor in the Federation, and the Federation is here now to guide your species away from incorrect ways of thinking. I acknowledge and understand your concern," the words are spoken without a fraction of sympathy, some phrase she probably read in a human child psychology book, "but with the Federation's involvement, there's no more need to fear your society going down a 'wrong path.'"

' _And what if we don't agree with all of your 'correct' ways of thinking?'_ he thinks but doesn't say, because she's already turned away from him, strolling back to the front of the classroom to continue the lesson.

' _What if your ways of thinking don't turn out to be so correct at all?'_

.

* * *

 _._

When Morty steps into the greenhouse that afternoon, he finds three of his classmates hidden behind a rather large, furling red plant and sharing a thick slice of cake. Jenny, Kaylee, and Hanna. For a moment, they stare up at him with wide deer-in-headlights eyes, forks still sticking out of their mouths, and Morty thinks about just turning right back around leaving; pretend he never saw anything.

It's the start of third session and their instructors always give them about ten minutes of free time before they're all rounded up for the day's lesson. Morty tends to spend that time in the greenhouse, just taking a moment for himself to scrub whatever previous unpleasantness had occurred that day from his brain. He's sure he can find somewhere else in the shop to let his mind shut down for a few minutes though, no need to disturb his classmates—especially this particular trio. From what he's seen, they could be rather snarky and mean at times, mostly to other girls, but still.

Except as he goes to leave, Kaylee rolls her eyes and sighs out, "Oh, it's just Morty. Jeez, we thought you were a teacher."

"Well, come on," Hanna says, waving him down to sit with them, the other two shifting to the side to make room. "You're gonna give us away."

Morty's eyes dart over his shoulder back towards the door, though he's not really sure why. Maybe he's just checking to make sure an instructor isn't in fact coming, or maybe he's looking for an escape route—but the three girls are watching him quite intently now, and he's pretty sure that leaving at this point would somehow be more insulting, and therefore more detrimental to his day-to-day high school life, than just sticking around and maybe eating cake with them.

It's not a hard decision to make. He plops down on the ground next to them, and oddly enough as soon as he does, Jenny pops the fork out of her mouth, stabs off a piece of cake, and holds it out to him saying, "Hope you're not a germaphobe."

Morty stares down at the fork, the fork that had just been in her mouth, clears his throat and stammers out a quick, "No, uh, no." He takes the proffered fork, mumbles out a quick _thanks_ and shoves the bite of cake into his mouth—chocolate and coffee flavored. Delicious, and very obviously pilfered from the culinary shop.

"H-how did you guys get cake?" he asks, passing the fork back over to Jenny.

The culinary arts shop runs a small bakery and restaurant that had been built directly outside of the cafeteria—all part of their food industry training—but only faculty and staff are allowed to eat there or purchase baked goods. Seniors sometimes get to eat at the restaurant, a reward for good behavior, but the school is otherwise very strict about not letting students buy from the bakery; something about encouraging healthy eating.

Hanna shrugs, says with a mysterious wave of her fork, "We have our ways."

Which most likely means they know someone in the culinary shop who snuck them a slice of cake, but Morty isn't about to pry for details.

The three girls have no such qualms themselves though about prying, and Morty nearly chokes on the next bite of cake he's offered when Kaylee asks him, "So what's with the bruises anyway?"

He swallows roughly, coughs into his arm and rasps out a quick, "W-what? My eye, you mean?"

But there are three pairs of eyes staring back at him, alight at the sign of potential gossip, and he knows right away that they're not just talking about his eye. There's blood in the water and they can smell it, sharks circling easy prey.

"I recognize concealer when I see it," Hanna says, pointing at his forehead and then gesturing at the rest of his face in general. "I mean, you did a good job, but we work close enough to you in shop to see the foundation powder when you're standing in direct sunlight."

Kaylee nods her head in agreement, and then leans over sideways to tug at the sleeve of his right arm, pulling it up just a bit to reveal the bandage hidden beneath, saying, "Yeah, and sometimes this peaks out. Looks pretty big for like, just a scrape or whatever."

Morty shifts his arm away from her, pulling his sleeve from her grasp and smoothing it back down over the bandage. The cut really isn't even that bad anymore. Mom's been helping him keep it clean. The only reason he even keeps the bandage on now is to hide the vivid red line from prying eyes.

"So what's the deal?" Jenny asks. "Have you been getting into fights? I've been hearing some of the other boys bragging to each other about fighting lately."

"No, no f-fighting," Morty says, shaking his head.

"Bullies?" Hanna prods.

"Your parents haven't been hitting you, have they?" Kaylee asks, a bit quietly.

"W-what?" Morty says, incredulous. " _No!"_

And then Jenny leans in close, asks in a near whisper, "It's not the Federation, is it? Like, someone in the school?"

She looks so absolutely serious when she says it, all three of them do, that the question gives Morty pause. In a way, some of his injuries were because of the Federation—that and his own stupid, reckless decisions—but it's clear that's not what she's asking here. She's asking about someone in the school, an instructor or one of the staff, and there's this muted look of fear and apprehension in the three pairs of eyes staring back at him.

"Come on, just tell us!" Kaylee hisses, also leaning in closer. "We want to know who to avoid."

"Nobody's hurt-hurting me," he insists, brow furrowing in confusion. "What are you guys t-talking about?"

"We all see the way they watch you, Morty," Jenny says, wrapping her arms around herself in a hug. "It's creepy, and there are all these rumors floating around about what it could mean."

Hanna rests a hand on Jenny's back, an absentminded gesture, her attention not straying from Morty as she says, "Yeah, why do you think so many people avoid you or ignore you? No one wants to get caught between you and the Federation's line of sight."

And here he thought it was just because he was unpopular; makes him wonder what else people have been saying about him behind his back. Still, this would be a good opportunity to clear up some of those rumors. He obviously can't tell them the full truth of everything they're asking about, but a little bit of truth mixed in with some lies should be good enough for the high school grapevine.

"N-no one's hurting me," he tells them again, quite adamant about this point. "My eye—I-I-I've been passing out a lot. F-fell in the bathroom an-and hit the sink. Doctors say it's a—a blood sugar thing."

"Like you're diabetic?" Kaylee asks, looking a little doubtful.

"Th-they're still figuring it out," Morty says with a shrug, and leaves it at that.

Hanna crosses her arms over her chest, purses her lips, "So why hide it?"

"Like you s-said, Federation's w-watching me," Morty explains, and at least this is a half-truth. "Don't need to—to give them mo-more of a reason too."

And here, Morty pauses, considers the pros and cons of revealing this next half-truth. If he doesn't say anything, he can only imagine what sort of stories they might think up to explain _why_ the Federation watches him so much. At the very least, he can guide the rumors in a direction he doesn't really mind.

Sighing, he finally tells them, "As for w- _why_ they watch me, th-they don't like my grandpa. G-guess he was—was some kinda revolutionary b-back in the day. They… they probably think h-he'll try to contact me at some point."

"Wait, your Grandpa Rick, he left?" Jenny asks, and it doesn't surprise Morty that they all seem to know him, or at least know _of_ him. Rick made an impression wherever he went, and he was always dropping by school to pull Morty out of class.

"Yeah," Morty says, looking away. "H-he's not coming back."

There's a pause, and then they pass the plate the cake over to him, tells him that he looks like he needs it more. Not much else is said after that.

.

* * *

.

That night, before bed, Morty breaks his routine and ends up playing two songs. He figures it's alright, figures it doesn't really matter anyway if it turns out to _not_ be alright.

Just three songs a day. Three songs a day and he'll be fine.

The ballade of an addict—another pill, another drink, or in his case, another song—just shoot it up, shoot it up, shoot it up. Aerosmith, Fall Out Boy, The Beatles, and Daft Punk. This is the playlist of his descent into madness and self-destruction.

He wonders what rock bottom will feel like.

.

* * *

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

.

The bruises have faded quite a bit over the past several days, shifting through a kaleidoscope of different colors on his face and chest; greens and yellows mixing in with varying shades of blues and purples and reds. His body looks like an experiment with watercolors. They're a muted plum color now with faint, blotchy green and yellow edges and a healed peachy flesh-tone bleeding through in some areas.

The tiny cuts on his face have also healed, scabs washing away in the shower, leaving behind pale pink markings. It won't be very long at all before he doesn't have to bother with the concealer anymore, though he will admit that he's gotten pretty good at the whole process. It only takes him several minutes now to get the job done (rather than the near half-hour struggle it had been before), blending in the various concealers just right and finishing it off with the foundation powder.

Dusting the last of the powder on now, Morty stares into the bathroom mirror and tilts his head this way and that, catching the light at various angles to make sure there's nothing _too_ obvious about the makeup, nothing that some random passerby at school will notice. Humming to himself, satisfied with his inspection, he moves on to his next order of business—namely, the cut on his arm. It had been a lot bigger than the cuts on his face, deeper even, so it's still got a little healing to do.

' _Overall though,'_ Morty thinks as he peels off the bandage and shifts his arm in front of the mirror so that he can better see the injury, ' _It's not that bad.'_

"It's looking a lot better," Mom says, startling Morty out of his examination. He drops his arm back down to his side and looks up to meet her eyes in the mirror. She gives him a significant look, her gaze roving over all the injuries he's sustained, even the ones she knows to be hidden beneath the concealer, and she says, " _You_ look a lot better."

"Th-thanks," he says quietly, not really knowing how else to respond to that. He presses his lips together tightly, drops his gaze down to the sink so that he doesn't have to look at her. He can tell that she still worries about him. He's sort of been unintentionally isolating himself in his room the past week and a half, losing himself in the music, and from an outsider's perspective, he's aware of how… _odd_ his behavior has been. There's nothing he can really say to her though that would ease whatever fears she may have, nothing that he can really think of that wouldn't be a lie.

He needs to spend more time with them is the thing—not just eat dinner and go hide away in his room under the excuse of doing homework. Even Summer spends more time with them than him, and she has that whole weird mystery group she's a part of.

' _Maybe just make the effort to sit down and talk with them more? Hang out a bit?'_

"You should leave the bandage off," Mom says, gesturing at the cut on his arm. "Let the air get to it a little bit."

Let it breathe and heal faster; give it a chance to get back to normal.

"Y-yeah, okay."

.

* * *

.

Morty's never felt more like a victim of child labor until the day spreading mulch became a regular part of their shop curriculum. Apparently when you're teaching a bunch of students technical skills, there's no more reason to hire outside help to maintain the school because you can just have the kids do it. The first lesson or two hadn't been that bad, but after a while, it went from learning a new subject to just being flat-out work.

' _Experience'_ they call it, ' _Learn by doing'—_ except there's only so many ways you can spread a pile of mulch, and he's pretty sure he and his classmates have gotten the method down by this point.

It's not like the work is overly difficult or anything, and there's just enough of a chill in the air so that none of them get overheated—he can't even imagine doing this kind of thing in the middle of summer with the sun bearing down on him. The entire process is just tedious though; shoveling heaps of mulch out of a truck bed and into a wheelbarrow, wheeling the mulch over to whatever area needs a fresh layer, and then dumping it out in little scattered piles and spreading the whole thing out with a rake—over and over and over again until his muscles cry out in protest.

His arms are useless limp noodles by the time third session draws to a close. Despite this though, Morty volunteers to put all the tools away because there's still enough time for the instructors to squeeze in a few oral reports before the bell rings, and he just knows that he'll be picked this time around. It's been far too long since he's last given a report—some article about the Federation's version of GMOs if he's remembering right—so the odds are definitely not in his favor today on avoiding being picked.

He's never been a fan of public speaking—stuttering and stumbling over his words while the entire class watches, just trying to get through whatever subject he's reporting on and hope he's remembering all the facts right. Struggling to unload a pile of tools from the truck bed and put them all away is much more preferable in comparison, even with his classmates snickering and making dumb 'dirty hoe' jokes as they walk by—

 _Having fun with that dirty hoe, Morty?_

 _Better rinse that dirty hoe off before you put it back. It's **filthy.**_

Yes, good job guys, just _hilarious._

Morty sighs, shakes his head to himself and grabs up an armful of tools, walking them through an open bay door and down a long hallway. The supply room is kept in the far end of the horticulture department; not actually a separate room so much as a massive steel cage welded into one of the side halls and kept locked up when not in use. The walls of the cage are lined with hooks and protruding bars to hang all of the tools back up on, a precarious balancing act of shovels, rakes, pitchforks, and hoes. Morty begins slotting each tool into its specific space, and that's when he hears the whispered words echoing through the room.

"I just… I dunno if I can do this."

The whispered voice is male; deeper than Morty's, but still young, so probably an older student. Morty pauses in putting a rake away, listens as the voice says, "It's different from before, man, more public."

A second voice speaks, also male, and his words are lighthearted and reassuring as he says, "All you gotta do is sing, okay? You'll do great."

Morty glances over in the direction the voices are coming from, squinting through the room's metal grating. Further down the hall, past the supply room, he can make out two tall shadows stretching across the floor from around a corner, both moving as they speak.

"Will you switch with me?" the first voice asks.

"Switch?" the second voice sounds dubious.

"Yeah, trade jobs with me!" the first voice says, practically pleading. "No one will know. The whole selection process was anonymous anyway."

The owner of the second voice sighs, the shadow of his arm stretching out to rest on the first shadow's shoulder as he says, "Dude, as your best friend, believe me when I say that you do _not_ want to switch jobs with me. Relax, alright? Just go out there and sing. It'll all work out just fine."

Although his curiosity is piqued by the conversation, Morty turns away from them, going back to his task of putting all the tools away. He'd been fine with listening in at first, but as their tone of voice shifted, the conversation suddenly seemed a lot more personal, like something Morty shouldn't be intruding on.

He quickly slots the last rake into place, just wanting to get the job done and get out of there before any more words can drift over his way. In his rush though, he misjudges the placement of the last hook, and regrettably, the rake tilts sideways into a stack of shovels, knocking a few of them down and the rest of them over sideways into a row of hanging pitchforks—and from there, it's a domino effect of falling tools knocking over other tools and all Morty can do is step back a safe distance and watch with a cringe as the entire left wall of the supply room knocks itself over.

There's a deafening silence after the last tool falls, no more whispered conversation from around the corner—until a pair of footsteps start walking towards him. Two boys emerge from the shadows, eyeing him with wary suspicion. They're older, just as he suspected, but Morty's surprised to see that they're actually seniors—seniors who definitely shouldn't be in shop at this time of day.

"It's just that Smith kid," the taller of the two seniors says, and the tension in their stances seems to drain away. The two older boys look over at the mess he made of the supply room, and they both immediately adopt this sense of superiority, one that Morty has noticed all seniors seem to hold over freshmen.

Sure enough, as the two walk past him, one makes the snarky comment of _'Nice job, freshman,'_ and the other bites out a quick, ' _Clean this shit up.'_

They retreat shortly after, and any questions Morty has about whatever they had been talking about fade from his mind as he looks down at all the tools he's going to have to put back up.

Morty sighs. He hopes he doesn't miss the bus again.

.

* * *

.

 _He's standing amidst a moving hologram—galaxies and nebulae, star systems and planets and black holes—it fills every corner of the garage in glimmering transparent color, floating around him in a gentle orbit. Stylus hanging out of his mouth, Morty grabs onto one of the star clusters and tosses it to the left, shifting the 3D map over a few galactic quadrants and stopping it only when the Tri-Cerebur'Ring formation comes into view, a group of three white dwarf stars surrounded by the gassy remnants of their planetary nebulae, orbiting each other so closely that it's only a matter of time before they'll collide into one._

 _Zooming in on the formation with a quick wave of his hands, he pulls the stylus out of his mouth and starts writing out notes in the air, glowing letters and numbers with various symbols to bind it all together in a way that makes sense._

 _Rick's hand closes over his shoulder, wrinkled and weathered with the middle and pointer finger missing, and the man leans over him to read over his work, says after a moment's pause, "No, no, you—your equation's off here. Yo-you gotta account for the stars'—"_

.

The vision cuts off mid-sentence, and Morty peels his eyes open to complete darkness. The abrupt shift in his surroundings and the unexpected change (combined with a frankly irrational fear of suddenly going blind) is so completely jarring that for a moment, all logic leaves him, and he's stumbling backwards, arms flailing out around him for something solid to connect to—but then the ground beneath him shifts and sags down, throwing off his balance, and he falls backwards off the edge of some precipice that seems to come out of nowhere.

There's only enough time for a quick yelp to escape him before his back hits the ground hard, briefly knocking the wind out of him and making his head spin—not a sheer drop off a cliff at all, Morty realizes, but just a two-foot step down.

His hands dig into carpet, _his carpet_ , and that's when coherence comes back to him. He's in his room. He'd been standing on his bed and he'd just fallen off, and he's not _blind_ , it's just dark.

From the looks of it, the power must have gone out at his house, cutting off his pre-dinner dose of music that he'd been playing on the computer—Aerosmith's _Dream On_ —just three songs a day now, one before school, one before dinner, and one before bed. That's all. Still not really a big deal in the long-run, not enough to make him sick, so it's fine.

Dragging himself to his feet, Morty stumbles his way across his bedroom, arms waving out around him to make sure he doesn't run into anything, until he reaches his dresser where his cellphone's still sitting propped up against some books. He stops the video from recording and switches on the phone's flashlight feature, slowly shining it around his room to better gather his bearings. He _had_ been in the middle of a vision after all; the possibilities of what that might result in are, as of right now, still innumerable.

And apparently tonight's strange, unconscious act had been all about writing down more mathematical gibberish—not really a surprise given the content of the vision. In his fugue state, Morty had taken down all the posters on the walls, exposing all the pages of crazy, fanatical writing he'd been trying to hide, writing that he has no doubt added to tonight. He waves the flashlight around the room—and yes, there on the bed is a set of different colored pens he must have been using to write with.

Mouth pressed into a thin line, Morty points the light back up at the wall, scanning over all the different pages. He can kinda tell where he added stuff on some of the pages, and there are formulas from before that have been crossed out now—at the same time though, it doesn't make any more sense now than it did before. It's still all just a messy soup of letters and numbers and symbols.

Jesus, he wishes he could be smarter, wishes he could understand even a little bit of this.

"Morty?"

Startled, he snaps the flashlight away from the wall and over to his bedroom door that his mom is now peeking through; the door only open partway like she's not sure if she's intruding or not. She squints against the light shining in her face, and for a panicked moment, Morty worries that she had seen the pages he'd been looking at on the wall, pages that he most definitely does not want her or Dad even knowing about anytime soon.

"Looks like the power's out in the whole neighborhood," she says, giving no indicator that she actually had seen anything on his wall—and Morty feels himself relax just a small fraction. "Why don't you come downstairs for a bit, spend some time with your dad and me? We'll have to improvise for dinner tonight."

He almost says no. It's such an automatic response now— _No, thank you, I have some stuff I need to work on—_ just one raincheck after another with no real intentions to follow through. The declination is on the tip of his tongue, but then Morty remembers the look on her face this morning, the worry that's been clear in both her voice and her body language for nearly the past two weeks now, not to mention his earlier thoughts on how he should be spending more time with his family, even if just for appearance's sake.

The power's out right now, and while he _could_ listen to music on his cellphone, even just finish up the rest of his song, does he really expect to actually accomplish anything in the dark like this? No, staying up in his room would be pointless, and given the circumstances, this actually is the perfect opportunity to get in some family time. Unless Dad decides to start singing, no power means no musical episodes.

Plus, he is getting a little hungry.

"Y-yeah, sure," he says, pointing the light on his cellphone down at the ground. "What—what did we have in mind for dinner?"

That night, they dine on cold cereal with milk, quick and easy with no cooking required. While his mom pulls out three bowls and Morty grabs the boxes of cereal they have to choose from, Dad frowns over at them and asks, "Wait, where's Summer?"

"Out with friends," Mom says immediately, her back to Dad and her words rushed.

Morty turns away from them both, shoulders stiff, and suddenly this blackout seems a lot less innocent. Summer disappears, likely to her group, right around the time the power goes out in his neighborhood—and who knows how far the power outage even goes? Its suspicious to say the least, and clearly his mom thinks so too, but Summer doesn't share any of those activities with Morty after that first time, and there's really not much else he can do about it either—nothing aside from help Mom cover for his sister's absence.

Turning back to his parents, Morty walks over to them and sets the boxes of cereal on the counter between them. Smiling at them both, he asks, "Who wants what? I—I'm having _Frosted Flakes_ myself."

They settle on the couch in the living room, candles flickering around them as they eat their cereal. Morty talks about some of the stuff he's been doing in school and Mom and Dad talk about various things that have been happening at work. Apparently they've gotten a bunch of new machinery in at Dad's factory and the Federation has been teaching everyone how to use it— _quicker and more efficient_ , Dad describes it as. As for Mom, one of the other surgeons at her work accidently sewed up his cellphone inside a horse's chest cavity and it had been ringing _Safety Dance_ post-op. From the sounds of it, the whole thing had been a big inter-office scandal.

It's…nice, just sitting with them and listening to their different stories, even sharing some of the mundane things that have been going on in his own life. It strikes him then just how long it's been since he's really taken a breather like this and talked with them—not just these past several days of self-isolation, but even before he woke up in the bathroom with a black eye. Sure, he sits down with them for meals, adds brief comments to whatever had been said and answers any questions they may ask—but actually sitting down and having several real conversations like this?

Apparently he's been isolating himself much longer than these past several days and he hadn't even realized it.

When Mom pulls out a deck of cards, Morty doesn't even hesitate in agreeing to a game. They play a round of bullshit—Mom thrashes them both—and then Dad stops to put together a plate of cheese and crackers for them munch on. After that, they play a few rounds of poker, Mom wins twice and Morty wins once, and then Dad teaches them both how to play rummy.

It's fun, relaxing even—so much so that Morty doesn't even care if the power stays off all night and he doesn't get a chance for his last song before bed. He's surprised to find that he's actually okay with skipping it for tonight and spending that extra time with his parents—and as he looks through his cards, he's even more surprised to realize that he thinks about wanting Summer here for this before the thought of Rick even crosses his mind.

And that's when the power comes back on.

The lights in the living room flare to life around them, and along with the lights, the TV turns on too. The volume had been left up high and it immediately blares out a musical sequence of some movie. Morty knows the song, has listened to it before, _Stuck In The Middle With You,_ but the movie is one he doesn't recognize, and he only has enough time to briefly take in the scene playing out on screen—one man dancing over to another man who's bloody and tied to a chair—before the vision drags him away.

.

 _Morty's sitting on the closed toilet seat in the motel bathroom with his knees pressed against his chest. Arms wrapped around his legs tight and bare feet curling over the seat's edge, he sits there and stares down at the body in the bathtub and doesn't blink._

 _._

The cards fall from shaking fingers. Faintly, Morty can hear his parents commenting about the power being back on.

.

 _Of course, the body isn't **just** a body quite yet, he— **it** still blinks, its chest still rises and falls with breath, and it even stares right back at him with a panicked coherence trapped behind those half-lidded eyes. Everything's just easier though if Morty thinks of it as a body and not a person, as an 'it' instead of a 'he'—it's easier if he looks down at this body and pretends that it's not a mirror image of himself, another Morty stolen away from a different dimension. _

_The body blinks in a significant way, like it's trying to convey some kind of important message, and Morty absentmindedly brings one hand up to his own head, skinny fingers shaking as they curl around a lock of hair, grip tight into a fist and pull, pull, pull until a chunk of hair rips free. He curls in on himself further and presses his mouth open against one knee, biting gently, saliva soaking into his pant leg, and he stretches his arm out and brushes his fingers together lightly so that the hair floats down to the bathroom tiles. Morty doesn't know why he does it, hardly even notices when he's doing it anymore—a distracted child pulling up grass and letting it float away in the wind._

 _._

Morty's hand rises up to his head, fingers burying into his hair and gripping tighter, tighter, _tighter._ He can distantly make out his parents' voices—questioning, concerned, calling out his name—but the music plays on behind them and he can't open his mouth to answer.

 _._

 _He reaches for his hair again and that's when a wrinkled hand closes around Morty's wrist, the gritty voice of his grandfather saying, "What did I tell you about doing that?"_

 _Rick steps past him, calm and leisurely, and dumps one last bucket of ice over the body in the bathtub, nearly filling it up completely. The body twitches just so slightly, useless muscles straining against an invisible force, but otherwise doesn't move; head lolled sideways against the lip of the tub, blinking, blinking, gaze darting back and forth between Morty and his grandfather._

 _Rick hardly seems to notice, pulls up a footstool right next to the tub to sit down on. He reaches over to grab the small duffle bag full of tools and a plastic cooler that had been set down near the sink just hours earlier. The man works methodically, scoops a couple cups of ice into the cooler and then unzips the duffle bag to grab the necessary tools; a variety of scalpels, a few retractors, an oscillating saw._

 _._

His breath comes in too quick and shallow—the air too thin—and for a brief moment, Morty can feel his mom's hands on his shoulders.

"I think he's having a panic attack—"

 _._

 _The fourth or fifth time Rick did this, Morty was able to see past his crippling horror long enough to wonder how a saw could be so careful as to cut through someone's sternum without damaging the organs beneath. Apparently there are special types of saws that immediately stop when they sense tissue, similar to the type of saw one would use to remove a cast. Rick took that concept and made it better with extra sensors and cauterizing lasers; he can open up a chest cavity as quickly and smoothly as unzipping a jacket._

 _Morty hugs his arms around himself tighter, starts to rock a little bit. He watches the way the body eyes the tools, pupils shrinking down to pinpoints and throat working around laser-severed vocal cords, fighting for a scream that will never come. Its chest rises and falls in a stuttering way, breath not quite reaching its lungs around all the chemicals of fear flooding its system, and Morty finds himself mimicking it, his own breaths short and fleeting, struggling against a rush of anxiety, a desperate need to **please** not go through this all again. _

_._

He can't breathe, can't get in enough air. He grips at his mom's arms tight and wants to say, _'Turn it off. The TV, turn it off!'_ But he just can't choke the words out.

 _._

 _"Rr-rrick," he says, his hand darting out to grab Rick's sleeve, stopping him just as he's about to turn the saw on._

 _"W-we don't need—don't need to keep doing this," Morty tells the man, his grip weak and shaking around the stained lab coat. "I-I'm okay w-with dying. I—I'm ready—I'm ready for it."_

 _'Please… please… please can we stop?'_

 _._

Yes. Stop. Please stop—

 _._

 _Morty feels frozen in place, watching the way Rick's shoulders hunch up, his head bowed down and turned away, not looking at Morty. The body watches them both._

 _And then Rick laughs, shoulders shaking, and he turns to Morty and says, "W-what? Dying? M-Mmmorty, no one's **dying.** D-don't be—don't be ridiculous." _

_The saw whirs to life in Rick's hands, a quiet hum with glowing blue lights._

 _._

He doesn't want to see this.

 _._

 _Rick leans over the tub, brushes a few ice cubes aside from the body's bare chest, and then drags the saw down and across in two quick swipes—a T-shaped incision, from the tips of both shoulders in a horizontal line, followed by a long vertical line from the base of the throat all the way down to the bellybutton._

 _Blood spills out across pale skin, staining the ice into the mockery of a red cocktail drink, and the body twitches and strains against drugged paralysis, ice clinking against the ceramic sides of the tub. Tears fall from the body's eyes of course, a steady stream running down its cheeks; Morty's never quite sure if it's just because of fear, or if the drugs Rick gives the body isn't enough to completely stop the pain._

 _._

Hands gently lower his head down between his knees, and Morty grips at his hair again tight and struggles to breath, struggles to scream out.

 _._

 _"G-get over here and heEEEELLlp me, would ya?" Rick says, holding out one of the retractors over his shoulder to Morty, his eyes never once straying from his work. "O-opening up a ribcage is a—is a two-person job i-iiif you want it done right."_

 _The body watches him as he takes the retractor with shaking hands, emotions of desperation and betrayal flooding those identical brown eyes. It's not something Morty can bring himself to acknowledge though, not if he doesn't want to completely lose his mind. He gets up from the toilet seat and sits on the edge of the tub, presses his knees against Rick's for reasons of comfort he doesn't understand, and as Rick wedges his fingers and one of the retractors into the incision, Morty lets his mind fall into a kind of autopilot fugue state._

 _._

"It's okay," he hears Mom say, her hand stroking up and down his back.

"Breathe," Dad says calmly. "Just breathe."

 _._

 _He's still aware of it all—the blood, the sound of snapping ribs as he helps Rick pry open the ribcage, and all the different organs still active beneath, lungs expanding and heart beating—but it's in a distant sort of way, muted, like he's watching it on a fake procedural drama instead of seeing it in real life. The warmth of the blood between his fingers, sticky and thick and collecting up under his fingernails—just Hollywood special effects. Fake. Not real. And as Rick cuts in with surgical precision, severing all the right blood vessels and connecting tissue, and the light fades out of the body's eyes, lids falling to mere slits and staring sightlessly into the abyss, that's just really good acting. Like really, **really** good acting; Oscar worthy even._

 _Rick removes the heart first; and what a fascinating party trick it is that the organ keeps beating even after removal from the body? The lungs follow shortly after—and then a number of other different organs Morty would probably know the names to if he actually paid attention in biology class—until the body's chest cavity looks pretty scooped out. The intestines are left behind. Morty doesn't need new intestines just yet._

 _"A-alllright," Rick says, "go strip and—and lay down on the bed."_

 _._

Sucking in air through gritted teeth, a strained noise of misery escapes him, shivers rattling through his body. On the TV, the music cuts off abruptly, and Morty flails his arms out, pushing his parents back and trying to rip himself free from the lingering remnants of the vision.

All too soon though, the music cuts back in, right in the middle of the chorus, and Morty slips from the couch onto his knees, his hands slamming down onto the coffee table in helpless frustration as the fading vision snaps back into place, as crystal clear as before.

 _._

 _Morty follows the instructions mechanically, stripping down to his boxers and going out to lie flat on his back on the bed, his arms stretched down limp by his sides. He stares up at a water-stained ceiling and focuses on breathing in and out, listens to the sounds of shuttles flying by outside the motel's front door. In the bathroom, he can hear the sound of Rick washing his hands, sterilizing them for the next step, and a moment later the man comes trudging out, lugging a cooler full of uncontaminated organs with him._

 _Rick pulls up a chair next to him and sets down the cooler. He swabs an alcohol pad across Morty's wrist and is oh-so gentle when he inserts the IV, hooking Morty up to a medicated fluid drip. As Rick readies the sedative, Morty is filled with the urge to reach out to him again, tell the man that it's okay, it's okay if he dies. He's ready for it now. They don't have to do this anymore, **please** , he doesn't want to do this anymore. _

_Instead though, all that comes out of his mouth is a quiet request, "Can we have the TV on, please?"_

 _._

His face is wet with tears he doesn't remember crying, his limbs stiffly struggling to move. The worst seems to be over now, but Morty can feel his hysteria building.

 _._

 _Injecting the sedative into Morty's IV line, Rick calls out to the boxy television device mounted up on the wall, "TV on, channel three-seven-six 'E', volume at twenty percent."_

 _It's Earth cartoons; so simple and childish, but at the same time completely comforting. Morty drifts into a drugged sleep to the sounds of animated slapstick comedy._

 _When he comes to, he distantly notes that he's been moved to the other motel bed in the room; the first bed he'd been on probably too damp with blood to be of any use now. A fluffy blanket is draped over him and he can feel a slight dip in the bed from where Rick's sitting on the mattress next to him. Morty blinks groggy eyes open, shifts his gaze over to Rick to see that the man's drinking from his flask, blue eyes locked forward on the TV that's still playing cartoons. Slowly and carefully, Morty drags one hand up over his still bare stomach, slides searching fingers upwards towards his chest until he feels the bump of a fresh incision. He doesn't ache, the drugs are too strong, but there's a definite… **sensation**_ _inside of him that changes have been made._

 _"W-when can I go home?" the words tumble out of Morty's mouth. He doesn't mean to say them, but the drugs mess with his head, make him speak without fully thinking._

 _Rick laughs, a sound that's both harsh and amused, just a touch unhinged, and he says, "H-home is wherever you—your grandpa is, Mmorty. Yyy-you know that."_

 _._

The music fades out, and on screen, the bloodied man tied to the chair is missing an ear and dowsed in gasoline and crying out, " _Stop! Stop!"_

"Stop!" the word finally rips its way out of his throat, raspy and strained, echoing the man on the screen. The vision is done, it's gone, but he can't get the images out of his head—the blood and gore, prying that other Morty's chest open and cutting out his organs, the feeling of the fresh incision on his own chest, and the sound of Rick's voice throughout it all, the sound of his laughter. Morty drags himself to his feet, arms stretched out at his sides to keep his parents away from him, keep _everyone_ away from him as he continues to shout with wide, wild eyes darting around, "Stop! **_Stop!_** "

Pushing past his parents, Morty manages to stagger halfway across the living room before he drops to his knees and vomits on the carpet.

.

* * *

.

 _TBC_


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

.

He really does have a panic attack after he throws up, or at least Morty thinks it's a panic attack. It's similar to his freak-out in the school bathroom last week, except somehow so much more drastic than that, or any other moment of fear or panic he's ever experienced before in his life—not just a shortness of breath, but a strangled feeling like his lungs are physically incapable of expanding all the way, accompanied by cold sweats and shaking and an overall lightheadedness like he's bleeding out internally and he might just be dying.

Not to mention the irrational fears that there might be some truth to those thoughts.

Is he hurt?

He must be hurt in _some_ way to feel this horrible.

The two white pills in his dad's palm look far too small to be of any actual use—because how could something so tiny possibly combat against what he's feeling right now? His mind, his body, it's self-destructing; two little pills aren't going to fix something of this magnitude.

But Morty has pretty much wedged himself into a corner of the living room, sitting curled up on the floor just a few feet away from his puddle of sick with no real strength to go any further anytime soon, and things don't seem to be looking up from that point, so he figures, fuck it, what's the harm, right? With a trembling hand, he takes the pills his dad holds out to him, manages to swallow them down dry before either of his parents even have the chance to think about getting him a glass of water.

Though that would be nice, considering the, uh, _flavors_ lingering in his mouth.

"Water an—and… t-turn the TV off," he croaks in between shuddering gasps, claps his hands over his ears and curls in on himself further, hiding his face against his knees.

He hears his parents' footsteps quickly moving away from him—one set going over to the TV and mercifully turning it off, while the other goes into the kitchen—but by this point, Morty's hardly even paying attention to them anymore, too busy trying to burn those images from his mind now that the TV's off and there's no lingering threat of a second vision.

Because it _is_ a threat.

 _Thick blood between his fingers; that slick raw-chicken feel of a human liver resting warm in his palms._

Jesus, why had he thought this could be something… something fun? Relaxing? Comforting even? Hell, the second vision he ever had involved seeing a chunk of his mom's head getting blown off.

The good ones outweigh the bad, that's what he told himself before, and there had been so _many_ more good ones than bad.

This… this one had been different though. So much more vividly real, so much more terrible than all the other bad visions he's ever experienced before.

 _"O-opening up a ribcage is a—is a two-person job i-iiif you want it done right."_

Morty shudders, can practically still hear it, the whir of the saw, the cracking of rib bones, and he realizes it's different from every other bad vision because Rick hadn't been there as a lifeline—someone to free him from purgatory, to heal his injuries after an abusive situation—no, Rick had been the thing he'd needed saving from. A shadow in the dark looming over him, laughing, bloody hands on Morty's shoulders as he says, _"You're not dying, Morty."_

He's seen his own Rick do a lot of terrible things, too many to count, but he's never felt the kind of fear he feels just thinking of the man now; this sensation of ' _stop'_ and ' _get away from me!'_

' _It wasn't real,'_ he tries to tell himself. ' _None of it had been real.'_

But he just can't get the images out of his head, the things he felt, the sounds he heard, it plays out on repeat in his mind. Even the few scattered visions of his parents abusing him hadn't been as bad as this, because at least in those ones he'd had Rick, or even Summer. In this though, he'd had no one—just been alone. Completely, helplessly alone.

"Morty?"

He peers up from his knees. His mom's crouched in front of him again, holding a glass of water out to him and a bucket that he didn't even think to ask for, but in retrospect is probably a good idea. Dad stands a distance behind her with his arms crossed over his chest and a tight frown on his face. They both look worried. He can't even imagine how much of a mess he looks like right now.

"Thanks," he says with a raspy croak.

He holds onto the glass with both hands, trying to keep the tremors running though him from spilling water all over the place as he sucks in a big gulp. The inside of the bucket fills his nose with the scent of soap and bleach as he hunches over it to swish and spit, rinsing all the unpleasant tastes from his mouth as thoroughly as possible. Drinking down the last few gulps of water, Morty pushes the glass and bucket away from himself and slumps back against the wall again, eyes shut tight and arms wrapped around his middle. Inhale and exhale and try not to think about it—remind himself again and again that it wasn't real, that it didn't actually happen to him, so it's not like it's something he needs to recover from.

"Do you want to talk about… whatever that was?"

His mom, still kneeling close by, but at the same time giving him his space.

And although a part of him thinks _'Yes, please,'_ because this is so fucked up and he's just not sure if he can handle it, Morty instead finds himself shaking his head and saying, "N-not really, no."

Dad makes a kind of disagreeing _hum_ noise, but surprisingly prods no further than that. Morty can tell that they want more of an explanation, questions that are probably a long time coming at this point, but apparently he looks pathetic enough right now for them to leave it alone.

Seems he's been getting away with that a lot recently.

The tremors gradually fade out, his thudding heart and quick breathing slowing down to a calmer pace as a drifting, floating sensation seeps into his head in a slow bleed—and woah, okay, yes, he can start to feel it now, the pills his dad gave him beginning to take effect. It spreads from his head and torso out to his extremities, this sense of sleepy relaxation that has him slouching more limply against the wall. He latches onto it and submerges all his focus on the physical feelings alone; no need to worry or think about the vision he just saw. It's not important, doesn't matter because it's not like it's really happening to him, it's just—whatever.

Everything's just whatever.

Distantly, Morty can hear his dad shuffling around the living room. He knows it's his dad because he's long-since been able to tell his family's footsteps apart. Dad has that kind of perfect heel-to-toe walk whereas Mom drags her heels every few steps. Summer always tends to walk more-lightly than everyone around her. Morty used to think it was because she was trying to be 'dainty,' but now it just seems like she's sneaking around everywhere. And as for Rick—

It… it doesn't matter. No reason to think about Rick.

Just relax; relax and enjoy this pleasant brain chemical cocktail.

The sound of something soft hitting the carpet catches his attention, and Morty peels his eyes open to the sight of his dad tossing pillows down onto the ground. Mom has disappeared and apparently so has the bucket and glass and his puddle of vomit has been scrubbed clean on the carpet—just how long has he been spaced out for? Morty blinks sluggishly. If he listens closely, he can hear the sink running in the kitchen.

Throwing a few more pillows down onto the carpet, Dad forms a kind of half-circle with them just a few feet away from where Morty's sitting. He disappears back over to the couch one last time, and when he returns, he's carrying a blanket and a deck of cards with him. When his eyes catch Morty's gaze, his dad smiles at him and he carefully steps forward to hold the blanket out, saying, "Hey, champ. Feeling better?"

Another slow blink, and Morty hums out a wordless confirmation. With a limp fingered grasp, he takes the proffered blanket and clumsily wraps it around himself. It's soft and fuzzy and rather soothing, and he bunches a corner of it up over his knees so that he can rest his head sideways against it.

Dad sits down at one corner of the pillow pile and starts dealing out cards, and a moment later, Mom returns from the kitchen with a fresh glass of water and a clean bucket in hand. She sets them both down onto the carpet next to Morty and then takes a seat at the other end of the pillow pile from Dad, picking up her cards to look through them. They're both acting so… normal, so calm, like nothing about this is strange at all and Morty didn't just randomly freak out, throw up on the carpet and have a panic attack.

"The game of the night," Dad says, picking up his own cards with a dramatic flair and an overly serious tone, "is _Go Fish._ "

Mom rolls her eyes, but says nothing against the decision, just looks back down at her cards and answers Dad's question of if she has any threes. Morty stares at them both through half-lidded eyes, feeling just a bit perplexed through the drugged haze. He's not quite sure how he was expecting them to react after his earlier music-induced episode—questions maybe, concern, a demand for answers—but definitely not anything like this.

"Morty, got any kings?"

His gaze sleepily drifts from Mom to Dad and back again in-between another few slow blinks, taking in their body language; shoulders loose and posture relaxed, their eyes on their cards and not fixated on him.

"G-go fish."

They play several rounds. Morty isn't really paying attention to how many times exactly or who wins when, but eventually he reaches a point where he can barely keep his eyes open and his parents decide to call it a night. While Dad shuts things down and locks up the house, Mom walks him upstairs to his bedroom, her hand on his shoulder for support and to keep him from swaying into a wall or something. It's been years since he's actually been 'tucked in' to bed, but Morty finds he doesn't really mind it tonight, the way his mom pulls the blankets up to his chin and smooths his hair back.

His eyes are nearly shut and he's almost asleep when she says, "What's this?"

She's holding a piece of paper, one she picked up off the ground, and although he has to squint to see, he can clearly make out the mathematical gibberish scribbled all over the paper's surface. He must have pulled it off the wall during his previous _planned_ episode earlier that night, and just hadn't seen it there in the dark when he'd been putting all the other torn down posters back up on the wall before he'd headed down for dinner.

He'd probably be panicking right now were he not so dosed up on chill pills.

"I, uh—I'm super in-into math now," he murmurs, the only explanation he can really come up with off the top of his head.

She frowns—and jeez, there it is again—that tight, pinched look to her eyes, sort of like how she'd looked when she caught him wearing the lab coat; worry and concern, pain hidden beneath a strained smile. Every day, she'll look at him and see more and more of a flicker of Rick behind his eyes.

Mom sets the paper down on his nightstand and smooths his hair back one last time, her hand lingering on his forehead for a brief moment.

"Goodnight, Morty."

.

* * *

.

 _How do you get blood out of bed sheets? What does housekeeping think when they come to clean the room after the fact?_

 _Morty's hands are cold from poor circulation, icy fingers trailing up his chest and bumping over incisions. He hears Rick slurp at his flask, feels the bed shift next to him as the man shuffles in place to get more comfortable._

 _What does Rick do with the bodies of the other Mortys? How many Mortys have there been?_

 _He's standing in the bathroom again, the cool tiles against his bare feet in direct contrast to the warm blood dripping down his chest, pooling into his bellybutton and soaking into the hem of his jeans._

 _"Hold still."_

 _Rick grips him tightly by the hip with one hand and reaches into the gaping wound in Morty's chest with the other. Long, callous fingers grip tight around Morty's heart and pull, pull, pull until the stitches tear and the heart rips free, contamination already spreading through the organ in mottled grey and green. Useless. Rick drops it into the wastebasket among several other contaminated and rotting hearts._

 _And Morty stands there, hole in his chest, watching silently as Rick reaches over to a bathtub filled with dozens of other hearts, all fresh and healthy looking and floating around in a deep pool of red. A thin pale arm hangs limp over the lip of the tub; whatever body it's attached to disappearing at the shoulder beneath all the blood._

 _This isn't real._

 _"Can we turn on the TV, Rick?"_

.

Morty wakes with a full-body jerk. Whatever scream he'd been attempting catches in his throat, his clothes clinging to his body in a cold sweat. He flails out of bed, the blankets wrapped around him too tightly, too restraining, trying to pin him down, and he stumbles to his bedroom door with the singular thought of a nice warm shower to cleanse the horror from his system; scrub his body down and ensure that there's no incision scars anywhere on him.

It's still dark out, either late at night or early in the morning, and his parents have long since gone to sleep themselves. The house is silent save for the occasional shifting creak and the soft sound of his footfalls against the carpet, clumsily hurried. It's only as he gets closer to the bathroom that he hears his sister's voice whispering swears under her breath, the beam of a flashlight occasionally shining out into the hallway—it's enough to reboot his mind into some semblance of logical thought.

Irrational. He's being irrational. Clearly the whole thing had just been a bad dream.

A terrible dream. A nightmare worthy of a therapy visit.

His sister's quiet hiss of _'fuck'_ drifts out the open bathroom door.

"Summer?" he calls out hesitantly.

" _Jesus,_ Morty, g-go back to bed."

Her voice wavers in a concerning way, and he's never heard her stumble over her words like that before. His mouth pressed into a tight line, Morty shuffles over to the door, one hand trailing along the wall next to him, and he only pauses when he reaches the doorway and sees his sister's silhouette hunched over the bathroom sink, her breathing heavy and strained.

He quickly fumbles for the light switch.

" _Don't—"_

Spots dance in his eyes, his pupils contracting to pinpoints as light floods the bathroom, but Morty blinks it all away so that he can focus on Summer. She's wearing the dark clothes again, black with blue splatters, except this time her shirt is ripped from the neckline down to one sleeve, exposing her left shoulder and the angry red mark that's wrapped around it. Summer claps her hand up to hide it, wincing as she does so, but Morty's already seen enough of the damage to be concerned—to know that he can't just go back to his room like nothing happened.

The wound is raw and just a little bit bloody looking, like several layers of skin have been rubbed off or eaten away. It's also oddly shaped, stretching from behind her back where he can't see and up and over her shoulder where it spans out in several long tendrils, like the roots of a plant. He's sort of reminded of… what's the word? Something to do with lightning—

 _"Th-they're called Lichtenberg figures, Mm-mmorty."_

Morty shakes his head with grit teeth, clears Rick's voice from his mind and rushes over to his sister. She has one of the first aid kits opened up in the sink, the contents of it spilled out and picked through, gauze pads unwrapped and rolls of it unraveled and strewn about. Clearly she'd been attempting to treat the injury herself and hadn't been having much luck; the wound being at kind of an awkward angle.

His hands hover without touching, wanting to help but not really knowing how. The damage looks even worse close up, a spider web of shallow red gouges branching out from each other, shiny and wet looking and just a little bloody in some places. The sight of it makes his stomach twist up into worried knots.

"Oh jeez, wh-what happened?" he says, his eyes darting between the wound and the medical supplies in the sink.

"Basically got attacked by the Federation equivalent of a guard dog," Summer says, rolling her injured shoulder with a strained grunt. She keeps her left arm tense and cradled close to her chest, her hand shaking and gripping tightly at the front of her shirt. Despite the pain she seems to be in though, she still somehow manages to smile when she says, "Got what we needed though, so, y'know, no big deal."

"N-n-no big deal, are you _kidding?_ " Morty says, voice shrill and rising in pitch, and suddenly he's very aware of the open bathroom door and the fact that both their parents are asleep just a little ways down the hall.

Quickly but quietly, he hurries to close the bathroom door. As he turns back to Summer though, that's when he notices the bulging backpack tucked into one corner of the bathroom, black with blue splatters, just like her clothes—and her words finally register in his mind, _'got what we needed.'_

"What is that?" he says, pointing to the backpack. Before she even gets a chance to answer though, to come up with some lie or fake cover story, Morty's stuttering out, "W-we-were you behind the blackout? W-what—what were you even doing that got you _attacked?_ "

"That's none of your business," she snaps, her body tense and defensive in a way that makes Morty feel like going on the defensive himself.

Maybe it's just the late hour and how wiped out he still feels, but he's suddenly just so fucking frustrated with being kept out of the loop on all these things she's involved with—things that are clearly both dangerous and important in some way—and yes, he's quite aware of how hypocritical he's being, what with all the secrets he himself is keeping about the music and the weird visions. Morty's not about to try and justify his choices and say that one subject is more or less important than the other—he just wants to know what's in that stupid fucking backpack that led his sister to all of _this._

Summer's good arm snaps out, her hand catching him by the wrist when he takes a determined step towards the backpack, and her voice takes on a suddenly hostile tone as she says, "If you're not gonna help me, you can leave."

Morty glares up at her, his mouth pressed together in a tight frown, but Summer just glares right back at him, not about to budge on the matter. They're at a stalemate here, but in this case, Summer has the upper hand. Her injury takes priority above all else.

Morty sighs, says, "F- _fine._ "

He steps away from the backpack and turns back to the sink, looks in at all the supplies there; gauze and medical tape, Band-Aids of all shapes and sizes, peroxide and various antibacterial gels. He looks back at Summer's shoulder and feels at a loss as to where he should start. He's personally never had to take care of anything worse than a cut before. Rick would always take care of any serious injuries they'd get during their adventures—but he's not thinking about Rick right now.

"Why didn't yo-you have that Dr. House lady look at it?" Morty asks, hesitantly picking up a tube of antibacterial gel and moving back over to Summer for another close look. He nearly recoils at the sight of it. The wound looks pretty bad.

Shrugging her good shoulder, Summer says, "We had to split up, make a quick getaway." She waves her right hand in the air like the whole thing was no big deal, "Home was closer than Base."

Grabbing some cotton balls to apply gel with, it's only as Morty goes to actually try and treat the wound that he notices their next big problem, and suddenly he feels even more unsure of himself than before. Swallowing thickly and leaning back away from his sister, he stammers out, "Uhh, your uhh—your shirt and bra are k-kinda in the way… Maybe w-we should go wake Mom up."

Yes, brilliant plan. Wake up Mom who has much more medical expertise than him and is also _their mom,_ and he can go back to bed and forget this whole night even happened.

Summer, unfortunately, does not share this sentiment.

"No, definitely _not,_ " she says, and she sounds quite adamant about this point as she goes on to say, "Dad's home tonight. It's already bad enough that Mom even knows a little bit about all this, I don't want Dad accidently waking up and finding out about it too."

"I'm not a doctor, Summer. I-I-I'm not even good at basic first aid," Morty says, grasping for straws, for some excuse that will make Summer agree to waking up Mom. It's not that he doesn't want to help her, or that he can't be mature enough in this situation to ignore his sister's chest and take care of the wound on her shoulder; it's just that he feels like he might just start having flashbacks to a certain BDSM nightmare if he does do this.

"Alright, look, just—" she wildly gestures behind her back with her right arm, her left still curled up against her chest, and says, "—unhook my bra and then close your eyes. I'll take care of the rest."

"Oh jeez," he says, but does as she asks, practically cringing as he reaches up under the back of her shirt and fumbles with the clasp on her bra. His very first time ever unhooking a bra on an actual girl and it's his _sister—_ Christ, doesn't that just figure?

And who the fuck made these things so complicated?

" _There,_ " he says, quickly closing his eyes and clapping his hands over them for good measure. He blindly steps back from her until his back hits the wall and waits for her to give the all-clear, pretends he doesn't hear the sound of her shirt and bra hitting the floor. Summer walks past him to the linen closet, shuffles around inside and then walks past him again.

"Okay, you can look," she says a moment later, and Morty slowly and carefully opens his eyes to see her sitting on the toilet with a towel wrapped around her middle, covering her chest but draped open in the back, leaving the entirety of the wound bared for treatment. It stretches even further down her back than he'd realized, branching off in several tendrils towards her spine and finally stopping halfway down.

"Fucker was on the ceiling above me," she says, a furious look on her face. "Didn't see it in time. My group got it off me quick though." Morty must have some kind of look on his face, because the anger in Summer's eyes softens just a bit and she adds, "It looks worse than it is."

"M-maybe we really should wake up Mom," he says, quiet and unsure.

Summer sighs, shakes her head _'no'_ and says, "If it really bothers you that much, I can have her look at it tomorrow, okay?"

He's hesitant to give in. He could probably be out the door and down the hall to their parents' room before Summer can even get up to stop him. At the same time though, he understands her not wanting to get Dad involved in all this, and if he does go wake up Mom, there's a high chance Dad will wake up too. It's not that they don't care about their dad, it's just that out of all of them, Dad has been the most accepting of the Federation's changes—

And the most pleased about Rick leaving, but Morty's not, not, _not_ thinking about Rick.

"Okay," he says, grabbing a washcloth first instead of the antibacterial gel, now that he's seen how big the injury is. "F-first chance you get to talk to her though…"

"Yeah, alright," Summer says.

He soaks the washcloth in warm water, squeezing out the excess, and sets to work on cleaning out the wound with gentle, tentative swipes. He wipes away what little blood there is—and she's right, it probably does just look worse than it actually is. Occasionally though, Summer winces, and Morty can't help but pause and bite his lip, and try to be even more gentle when he starts back up again.

When the wound seems clean enough, he pats it dry with a fresh towel and moves on to applying antibacterial gel to the worst of it. Bandages follow shortly after that, and is probably the most difficult task of all considering placement of the injury. He ends up taping a layer of gauze pads down over the sprawling red marks. They don't have enough rolls of gauze to wind it all the way around her in any sufficient way, so it's the best they can do for now. The end results are a complete mess—he wasn't kidding when he said he was terrible at first aid—but it'll keep the wound protected until Mom can look at it tomorrow, so he can't really complain.

"Thanks," Summer says, finally starting to look tired by the time he finishes. Whatever energy or adrenaline she'd had from before is clearly gone, and if Morty were to estimate, they've probably been in this bathroom for about an hour now.

"Why are you up this late anyway?" she asks.

The nightmare floods back to the forefront of Morty's mind—he'd almost forgotten about it among the chaos of finding Summer hurt, but now he finds his eyes darting over to the bathtub, an image of blood flickering across his vision, all the hearts piled up in the trash bin and floating in the tub.

Do hearts even float? Probably not.

"N-no reason," he says, gaze snapping back over to his sister. She stares at him carefully, lips pulled down into a frown, but considering her own stubborn insistence on not telling him the truth, there's not much she can say to him right now and she knows it.

"Well, you should probably get back to bed then," she finally says, waving him away. "I'll be fine, and anyway, you have school in the morning."

She has a point. Morty doesn't know what time it is, but he's pretty sure he won't have too much more time to sleep before he'll have to get up again, and Summer seems to have things under control from here. He really doesn't want to wait around and end up having to help her put a shirt back on either.

"G'night," he says, and retreats back to his room.

His cellphone reads 4:23AM when he collapses back on his bed, which means he only has about an hour and thirty-something minutes left to sleep before he needs to start getting ready for school. He's not sure if he can get back to sleep though, not sure if he even _wants_ to go back to sleep if it means risking the chance of falling back into another nightmare. He shifts uncomfortably on his bed, the mattress feeling too stiff and his blankets too lumpy and smothering.

Morty thumbs on his cellphone with pursed lips. The icon for the music app stands out brightly against the dark background he has set for his home screen. Normally in this kind of situation, he'd be using this time to unwind with a song; relax back into what was likely to be a comforting, if not pleasant vision with Rick, or some variation of Rick.

The thought of listening to a song now though sends a twinge of anxiety curling through his gut, his thumb shaking as it hovers over the icon.

Prior experience tells him that the odds are very low that he'd have another bad vision so soon after the last one. The majority of them so far have all been nice in some way or another—but he just can't get the last one out of his head. Killing that other Morty, cracking open his ribcage and cutting out his organs, the blood and the tears—and then there was that manic glimmer in Rick's eyes—the whole thing casts a dark shadow over every other vision he's ever had; a gloom he just can't bring himself to see through.

Morty sets his cellphone back on the nightstand.

No more.

He can't bring himself to do it anymore.

His breath shudders out of him, tears threatening to well up behind tightly shut eyes, but he forces them back. In a way, he supposes this is a good thing. Whatever the visions are, whatever's causing them, it's unlikely that it's at all healthy for him—like smoking a cigarette, the longer you do it, the more damage you'll cause.

It's also probably not healthy for him to be clinging onto Rick like this either…

Morty can admit that he'll miss it, the good ones at least.

Still, if there's the possibility of more bad visions like last night, it's better to just quit cold-turkey.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

 **.**

Summer lies on her bed like a broken marionette puppet, sprawled out on her stomach with her head turned away in sleep, her limbs starfished out across the sheets with her bad arm hanging limp over the edge. Morty stands quietly in her doorway, his hand gripping white-knuckled at the doorknob as he watches the slow rise and fall of her back as she breathes. She's wearing a loose tank top now, the messy bandages he taped onto her last night bared for all the world to see, and he can't help but think of the gruesome marks hidden beneath, zig-zagging across her shoulder and back.

Morty frowns, eyes narrowing, and his gaze snaps away from Summer's sleeping form to look around her room, searching, scanning every corner and crevice. He's a little surprised she hadn't locked her door to keep dad out while she slept, considering how adamant she'd been that he not know anything; she must have been too tired at the time to think of it. It leaves him with a perfect opportunity though, not only to check on her before he has to head out to school, but also to take a look inside that backpack and find out what the hell could be so important.

Hand slipping away from the doorknob, he quietly pads into her room on socked feet. Summer wouldn't have had the time or energy to take the backpack someplace else last night, so she must have tucked it away somewhere around here, a temporary resting spot before she brings it to her group's ' _Base.'_ Morty feels strangely determined to find it before she does, not only because of his irritation over being kept out of the loop, but also because… his sister got hurt getting this thing, practically _maimed_ , and a surge of protective anger rushes through him at the thought. He needs to know why, needs to know what she's hiding from him, what could be worth so much effort and pain.

Making sure to keep an occasional eye on his sister just in case she starts to wake up, Morty sweeps her room with silent steps, his gaze scanning all the obvious places an overly tired person would try to hide something—and sure enough, there it is, tucked in the crevice between the wall and her desk. It takes a bit of careful angling on his part, but he manages to grab it without knocking over any of the crap she has piled around the area, slowly lifting it up and out.

Shuffling back a few paces, and with one last quick look at his sister to confirm her sleeping status, Morty sits down on the carpet and quietly unzips the backpack.

And frowns.

Inside… it's nothing he really recognizes; equipment and supplies that is clearly alien in nature, palm-sized octagonal plates with chrome fasteners and transparent circuitry, glass casings embedded into small steel paneling, bundles of glittering wires held together with a hairband and plastic sandwich bags holding tiny opaque data chips of some sort. To the average human, it would look like a treasure trove of advanced technology beyond Earth's comprehension, but to Morty, it just looks like a bunch of junk—the kind of crap he'd see all the time in the various pawn shops Rick would drag him to—and suddenly he wonders if Summer and her group don't know as much as they think they do.

You take a calculator back to the middle ages and the locals will think it's some kind of magic, but that doesn't change the fact that in the end, it's still just a calculator. Good for doing basic math with, but not worth much else than that—certainly nothing that you'd face a vicious alien guard dog over.

So what use can they possibly have for any of this? Even if it is possible to put it all together in some significant way, it's not like Summer or anyone in her group will even know how. Her and Morty may be related to a genius, but they're not geniuses themselves—they can't just take a bunch of junk and build a... a spaceship out of it or whatever—and it's not like Rick ever gave any in-depth instructions for the majority of the experiments he did and the inventions he made.

Slowly exhaling through his nose, Morty presses his lips together tightly as he rifles through the backpack one last time, just to be sure that he didn't miss anything. Nothing of any importance jumps out at him though, and he finds himself glaring down at the bag, just a bunch of trash—and suddenly _he's_ the one standing on the sidewalk watching his sister wander out into oncoming traffic to save a dumb bird, is filled with a sense of protective rage and _how dare you make me worry?_

What does Summer even think she's playing at? She may not have gone on as many adventures with Rick as he had, but she's got to know that this stuff is useless, right?

Or does she know something that he doesn't…

Huffing out a frustrated breath, Morty very nearly zips up the bag, ready to put it back and leave, when he pauses—stares down at all that junk stuffed into the backpack—and is struck with a rather impulsive (and maybe just a little bit selfish) idea. Chewing on his lower lip, Morty's gaze darts over to his sister one last time, one hand hovering over the open bag, hesitant—but then his eyes lock on to the sight of all those bandages, and from there, the decision is easy.

Morty takes a few of the small opaque data chips out of one of the sandwich bags, grabs one of the octagonal plates covered in transparent circuitry for good measure too. He's not sure if she'll actually notice them missing, there are still a couple dozen of the things left in the backpack, but if she does notice, and if she really does need these things, he can always give them back.

She'll need to come to him with the truth first though before he does.

Zipping the backpack up, Morty puts it back where he found it and quickly slips out of Summer's room, closing the door behind him as he goes. He leaves the door unlocked like it'd been before, not liking the idea of no one being able to get to Summer if that wound ends up being worse than they thought—all risks of Dad walking in on her be damned.

Making a quick stop at his room, Morty hides his stolen goods in a tin box full of old Pokemon cards and stuffs that box at the back of his underwear drawer for added security, right next to an unopened box of condoms his dad gave him over a year ago—pretty much the last place Summer would ever care to look.

Hurrying to change into some moderately clean clothes and slip on his shoes, Morty grabs his backpack and heads downstairs will all intentions of grabbing a quick breakfast before he needs to leave to catch bus. He thumbs on his phone to check the time—fifteen minutes before he should be out the door—and uses his momentum and the banister at the foot of the stairs to swing himself in the direction of the kitchen when the sound of the TV playing in the living room catches his attention.

There's no music, thankfully, but rather the clipped, professional voices of the local news reporters; their words drifting over to Morty and bringing him to a stumbling halt.

"— _protesting the Federation's presence on our planet._ "

Twisting on his heel, Morty darts into the living room to hear more, so focused on the TV that he barely pays any attention to his mom sitting on the couch, her hands clasped tightly together on her lap as she too stares unblinking at the scene playing out on screen. It's video footage taken at night, probably last night, of a wide, towering building—the Federation's _Tourist Control Center_ for off-world visitors—and parked in a barrier around that building are cars and trucks and vans, their headlights on and shining out into the dark streets, the only light for miles around due to the blackout.

More remarkable than that though are the people standing in a massive crowd on and around all the vehicles circling the building. It's hard to make out any distinguishing features on any of them given the lighting of the scene, just dark silhouettes standing tall and strong, joining hands in the air and crying out. The only thing that really is visible are the picket signs, with dozens of flashlight beams pointed their way, illuminating bold words calling out for the Federation to leave, protesting their manipulation on human life—and standing on top of the tallest truck, a silhouette waves a massive flag, beams of light dancing across its surface to reveal an image of Earth with what looks like every country's flag circling the background behind it.

Morty's backpack hits the ground with a dull thud, all thoughts of getting to school forgotten. He steps closer to the TV, watching it all with wide eyes.

As the video footage plays out on repeat from a variety of different camera shots, the news reporters keep a running commentary going, explaining how the protestors showed up shortly after the power went out all over the city, how the cause of the blackout is not yet known but authorities are investigating on a possible connection between the two incidents, how the protest went on for almost an hour even after Federation patrols showed up—

"— _and when patrols did show up, protestors began singing a song from the popular musical, Les Misérables, 'Do Your Hear the People Sing.' Incidentally, the song actually encouraged other humans to join the protest, increasing the number of people involved to well over a hundred."_

The video footage cuts to a much closer shot of the protestors, the recording's audio fading back in just as the news reporter finishes speaking, dozens of voices singing in chorus—and Morty practically dives for the remote on the coffee table, his thumb mashing down the mute button. He feels a brief twinge behind his eyes that makes him cringe, but then the TV sound cuts out and the sensation fades away. Footage of the protest continues to play out in silence, the clip most definitely containing the aforementioned song, given how long the news channel seems to be focusing on that one close-up.

Morty slowly exhales, the remote hanging in a limp grasp at his side. Jesus, he needs his earplugs—should just _always_ have them on hand.

He can feel his mom's eyes on his back, watching him carefully, but rather than question him on his strange reaction, she merely says, "It's unnerving to see, isn't it?"

He looks over his shoulder at her, but she's already looking away, turning her gaze back towards the TV. She folds her arms loosely over her chest in a half-hug, presses her lips together into a tight line.

"I-I guess," he says, stepping around the coffee table and sinking down onto the couch next to her.

It's true that he's already seen a lot of crazy fucked-up shit during his travels with Rick—race wars, riots, genocide—but all of that had been on strange alien planets that he'd had no real connection to. After the adventure, he could distance himself from the memories of it all, like it had all just been a TV show. Seeing what seems like the start of something similar here on his own planet though—all those protestors waving their signs, the foreboding arrival of the patrol ships, and Federation authorities slowly closing in on the growing crowd—it's much more personal, much more real.

Eyes glued back on the TV, Morty watches as the clip cuts out just as Federation authorities truly begin to approach the crowd. Over and over again, the different clips play out and then stop once the Federation makes their move, no video footage ever playing beyond that point—and Morty can't help but feel a sense of apprehension and fear twist up inside him. For a moment, he wonders if maybe Summer had been in that crowd, that maybe her attack happened after all the cameras stopped recording—but he immediately dismisses the thought when he thinks of all that junk she brought home, junk that, according to her, made the injury ' _worth it.'_

Where would she have found the time to get all that stuff among all the protesting? And for that matter, _how_ would she have been able to get all that stuff with so many eyes and cameras watching?

No, the protest at the _Tourist Control Center_ building had been too obvious, too much of a display for any real covert work to be done—and from what he'd seen at the book heist and then the safe house he'd woken up in afterwards, Summer's group seems to like staying in the shadows, hidden and off the Federation's radar as much as possible.

So why have a protest so loud and in-your-face, why do something that's just asking for attention? It's possible that the protestors were just acting on their own, a group of people entirely separate from Summer's group—but for all of that to be happening at the same time, right in the middle of a city-wide blackout? It's too much of a coincidence.

And then it hits him, the voices of those two seniors from yesterday coming back to him—

 _"It's different from before, man, more public."_

They'd been so nervous when they thought they'd been overheard.

 _"All you gotta do is sing, okay?"_

The singing protestors— _singing the song of angry men—_ those two seniors had been involved in it all, with one being _selected_ for the job of singing, and the other—

 _"—believe me when I say that you do **not** want to switch jobs with me."_

And why would that be—unless the other job the second senior had been sent off to do was much more dangerous, such as having to break in to some Federation building and steal a bunch of bullshit alien tech.

Which means the entire protest had just been a distraction, something to draw the Federation's attention away from the real target.

Summer's group… it's not just organized, it's strategic too, with actual intellectual thought going into every move they make, with one plan likely connected to another and then another after that—involving not just adults and college-aged twenty-somethings, but now also high schoolers, kids from Morty's school even. The group isn't just big, it's _massive—_ Earth's very own _Citadel of Ricks—_ and all being led by _sir-yes-sir, Tyler?_

Or are there more than one Tyler?

A Council of Tylers?

Standing there with scraped knuckles and crooked noses, sending Summer marching into danger with furious determination burning in her eyes, taking Morty's hand in a steel grip, smile and hum and say, ' _Interesting…'_

Morty needs to find out more about this guy, about Summer's group in general.

But first, school.

He checks his phone again for the time.

 _'Looks like I'm skipping breakfast this morning.'_

* * *

 _TBC_

How the hell did this story get so loooong?

So I did some more in-depth plotting for the next several chapters, and I realized overall, this story could easily end up being 30 to 40 chapters long. Which brings me to this question:

I'd like hear all of your opinions on the pacing of this story. Does it feel like it's dragging at any parts, or that the story is slowing down in general? Is there anything you'd like to see more or less of? I just want to get a general feel for how things are going so far. This story will probably end up being over 100K, and I don't want it to turn into boring 100+K of "Oh god, when will this thing ever _end?_ "

Thanks in advance! :)


	16. Chapter 16

_I just wanted to thank everyone for all your lovely reviews and words of encouragement. It really means a lot to me and inspires me to keep going with this story. :)_

 _._

* * *

 **Chapter Sixteen**

 **.**

You watch TV these days, drama or comedy aimed towards kids and teens—Nickelodeon, Disney, MTV, ABC Family—and you still see the high schools and middle schools and college campuses portrayed as they had once been, back before the Federation showed up. The hallways are loud and packed full of students with the occasional teacher intermingling. Everyone tends to be grouped up among friends and absorbed in their own little dramas—some laughing, some talking, while others are quietly contemplative or even just tired from the early morning hour. It's the period between classes, and thus the perfect time to catch up with friends, and the gossip flying back and forth through the halls is never whispered fearfully, but rather spoken with a kind of enthusiasm of _'did you **hear** what so-and-so did?'_

You never see a show go into what it's really like these days. Even the few reality TV shows that happen to take place around a school setting are glammed up and glossed over all pretty sparkling perfect. The only real indicator that any change has taken place in their world is this one TV show the Federation released that focuses on the life of a couple teens who tested into their higher education programs. It's pretty similar to all the Earth shows that still focus on the _ghost of high school past_ , except just… more amazing.

Of course, even back before all the changes, Morty wouldn't exactly call TV's version of any kind of school _completely_ accurate, but the differences have never been as obvious as they are today, in the wake of last night's protest.

The hallways have always seemed kind of empty after all the smart kids started testing out left and right—and with so many others who couldn't test out just flat-out quitting school—but as Morty heads in the direction of his first session for the day, the school's general population seems to have decreased even more-so than usual. Morty can't help but wonder how much of that is due to parents deciding to keep their kids home for the day, and how much of it is because his missing classmates had actually been _involved_ in the protests last night.

Federation authorities closing in and the video always cuts out…

 _All around them, people are running away, when suddenly Mom jerks, her body twisting violently in place as a chunk of her head disintegrates into dust._

No… what could have happened to them is anyone's guess, but it can't have been that bad, right? Something that vicious would have caused more of an uproar, TV censorship be damned.

Morty eyes the scattered masses around him as he makes his way through the halls. Those of his classmates that do remain are standing close together in tight groups, clustered up against rows of lockers and standing in shadowed corners. It's a defense mechanism that reminds Morty very much of prey animals; safety in numbers and all that. Their whispered conversations are too quiet for him to pick up a single word on, but you don't have to be a genius to know what everyone's talking about. There's an obvious tension saturating the halls, one that makes an irritated itch of unease prickle at the back of his neck and creep down his spine like the footfalls of a spider.

His hands tighten around the straps of his backpack, pulling it snug against himself, and he shrugs his shoulders a few times to rub away the sensation—shivers at the sensory induced memory it brings, that time some otherworldly creature crawled up his back during an adventure with Rick, the image briefly slotting into place in his mind, the sound of Rick's voice saying, _'I think it likes you, Mor-Morty.'_

Reaching back to scratch at his neck, Morty shakes his head and forces the memory away. Slipping off his backpack, he picks a locker that's close-by to his first session classroom and stuffs what he doesn't need inside. His jacket, his bagged lunch, session two's textbooks, and a thin binder packed full of laminated leaves they're in the process of identifying. Lockers used to be assigned to each student, but now that there's so many empty ones, no one really cares anymore. As long as you have your own personal combination lock to slap on it, it's first-come, first-served.

When the intercom crackles to life, the principal's familiar voice beginning with a standard greeting of _good morning students and staff,_ Morty very nearly ignores the entire thing, heading into his first session classroom instead where his science teacher, Mr. Roth, is already in the process of setting up a powerpoint presentation for his usual short lecture. The words ' _brief morning assembly'_ give him pause though, along with Mr. Roth's irritated sigh as the man glares up at the classroom's intercom speakers.

Nervous looks are exchanged around the classroom, his classmates who had arrived before him shrinking down into their seats. The last time their school had bothered to call an assembly, it had been right at the start of the school year, with Federation officials looming on the stage behind the principal as he explained all the changes that would be taking place. For an assembly to be called now, so shortly after the protest, Morty doubts it's for anything good.

Mr. Roth ushers them all out of the classroom to start heading down, grumbling to himself as they go about how this will probably be cutting into his lecture time today. If he notices how reluctant they are to go, he doesn't seem to care; just tells them to hurry up as they drag their feet leaving—and then Morty and his classmates are back out into the halls and merging in with the rest of the crowd as they all flock down the stairs to the auditorium on the first floor. There's more whispering floating back and forth, but what little he can catch of it isn't really helpful, just everyone worrying about what the assembly's for, and wondering if maybe they should have stayed home from school today too.

The first thing Morty notices as they all filter in through the auditorium's double doors is that there are only two humans standing up on the stage, the principal and the dean of students—both visibly outnumbered by the six Federation staff members standing next to them.

The second thing he notices is how six pairs of red insectoid eyes seem to immediately zero in on him the moment he steps through those doors, watching him with a laser-like focus as he slowly shuffles down an aisle and takes a seat near the back. They don't look away once he's settled either, just stand up there on the stage and stare at him in a way that's so obvious, other students make a point _not_ to sit anywhere near him; something that's not too difficult a task considering how many people are absent today. Whether this assembly is about the protest or not, it's clear that they think he's somehow involved, probably even think he orchestrated the whole thing when for once in his life, he had nothing to do with it.

Those are not the eyes of someone who thinks of you favorably, and Morty can't help but curl in on himself a bit, shoulders hunching defensively, and he drops his gaze to the ground. There's a gap of space between him and the rest of the students as everyone takes their seat—just a lone tree out in the middle of a desert during a lightning storm, not an easy target, but the _only_ target. He scratches at a nervous itch on his collarbone now—presses the toes of his shoes into an unidentified sticky mark on the floor, likely a dried up puddle of soda, and pretends to be fascinated by it.

The microphone on the stage whines to life and a familiar voice clears its throat, but it's not the voice of the principal who begins speaking, it's the guidance counselor Morty had spoken with over a week back, the very same one who had told him about his limited future and his abysmal chances of ever leaving Earth again. Lr-something—he can't even remember.

"I'm glad to see so many of you decided to come into school today," the insectoid says. "Don't worry about your fellow students who aren't able to join us though. They will be sent home with letters for their parents or guardians, as this is all very important information we will be going over."

There's the quiet whirr of a motor and movement on stage, and Morty finally looks up to see the large white projector screen lowering down from the ceiling. Lr fiddles with a small remote in his clawed grip, turning on the projector mounted up on the ceiling as he says, "By now I'm sure you've all heard about that… _protest_ that occurred last night."

He says the word with just a touch of distaste, but clears his throat again and quickly continues on before that brief moment of derision can fully settle in their minds. He instead talks to them like he's trying to be their friends—the same tone he'd used when telling Morty empty sentiments about finishing high school and _enjoying this time with your friends._

Y'know, if he had any friends.

"We are aware that protesting is an integral part of your human culture, just as it has been a part of many other species' cultures before they too joined the Federation," Lr says. "This kind of activity is nothing new to the Federation, and whenever a new planet joins our ranks, we expect there to be a period of adjustment."

He clicks through the first few slides, showing first an image of a strange alien species looking violently enraged, with sharp teeth bared and a multitude of slimy arms holding signs in the air splashed with bold foreign symbols—then cuts to a second image of that same alien species looking peacefully calm as it stands hand-in-hand, or slimy appendage in claw, with a uniformed Federation officer. It's like seeing a before and after picture, with each image after it following the same pattern. Angry alien, happy alien, angry alien, happy alien—over and over again—but Morty looks at it all thinks that if you were to just reverse the order of all those pictures, it would tell a completely different story.

"The reason why we've called you all in here today," Lr continues, pausing the slideshow on one of the happier pictures, "is to teach you about how there are better ways to express your opinions and concerns, and how actions such as 'protesting' are just not necessary."

He folds his clawed hands behind his back and begins a slow, leisurely pace back and forth across the stage as he speaks. Behind him, the principal and dean of students stare straight ahead, their arms held tightly down by their sides with a pinched look to their eyes on their otherwise blank expressions. A perfect example of self-discipline, yet at the worst possible moment—

But then, what could either of them even say or do to make any difference anyway?

"If you weren't aware," Lr says, his short, stubby antenna flattening back against his head, "several of your classmates were involved in last night's activities. As your educators, it is our responsibility to address this matter with you all personally to prevent this from being an issue in the future."

The insectoid pauses in the center of the stage, turning to face them, and again he adopts that friendly, sympathizing tone, "I know it's difficult to change your way of thinking, and go against concepts you've been taught to believe a certain way throughout your lives, but you must understand that protesting is destructive and dangerous."

Twisting back to the projector screen, Lr snaps his arm up, claws jabbing at the _next_ button on the small remote as he switches to a new slide and says, "I'm sure they weren't showing _these_ images on the news."

They're pictures of a building, orange morning sunlight reflecting off broken windows and glittering shards of glass dusting the ground. Trash is strewn about both inside of the building and outside on the streets, and if you look closely, you can see black tire tracks from some vehicle burning rubber over the walkways surrounding the building.

"What you're seeing here are pictures taken of the Tourist Control Center this morning, in the aftermath of last night's protest." Lr says, and here, his voice takes on a kind or reprimanding, lecturing tone. "This kind of damage is completely unnecessary. If those protestors had any kind of real concerns, they could have easily taken them to be addressed at the local Federation/Human Relations center. There's one in every major town and city, with public transportation available for those who don't live close by, so there's absolutely _no reason_ why this couldn't have been resolved peacefully, and without a need for protesting or property damage."

As the insectoid goes on to give further information about the Federation/Human Relations center—telling them where their town's particular center is located and explaining all the ways the center is so helpful to them and beneficial to their community—Morty turns his focus to the image of the damaged building that Lr seems to purposefully leave up on the screen. He wonders what he's sure many of his classmates are also currently thinking about, namely what had happened in the time between the video footage cutting out and all the damage shown in those pictures.

From what had been shown on the news this morning, while the protestors had seemed angry about their cause, and rightfully so, the protest in general had looked like a peaceful one. He supposes it's possible that the property damage had also been a part of the distraction plan—if the protest is indeed connected to Summer's group—and it's not like Morty can even really judge them for it given that he recently drove a car through a storefront, but somehow he can't help but think that there must be more to this story. The Federation certainly isn't going to divulge any more details on the matter though, and he doubts that Summer will either.

Just another question he'll probably have to figure out on his own, though not a very important one in the grand scheme of things.

"—this week the school will be starting its new off-site educational trips, and if you haven't turned in your permission slip yet, make sure to get that to your shop instructor as soon as you can," Lr is saying when Morty tunes back in, and then very nearly tunes back out once he hears the subject matter, because it's not like any of it applies to him anyway—but then the alien's voice takes on a hard edge that has Morty sitting up in his seat to listen.

"The reason I'm informing you of this now is because these trips are a _privilege_ , not a _right_ ," Lr says this point quite forcefully. "Both the Federation and this school system will not tolerate any bad behavior such as what occurred at the Tourist Control Center last night, and anyone found to be involved in any future protests or acts of aggression will no longer be allowed on these trips."

Narrowed red eyes slowly scan the crowd, like the insectoid can already tell who will be 'problem children' and lose their field trip ' _privileges_ '—and Morty thinks 'field trip' because that's what it is, a _field trip._ Dress it up in as many fancy words as you want, it doesn't change the fact that the concept is the same.

He's also sure the only real reason Lr's eyes skim right past him as a potential 'problem child' is because the alien already knows that he's not going to be allowed on any of these trips anyways—otherwise Morty's sure Lr would be looking at him and _only_ him.

"You will simply have to stay behind at school while your classmates get to go out and learn new and exciting skills," Lr concludes dismissively. "The choice is of course all up to you."

Somehow that feels like a personal jab at Morty, but he bites at the inside of his cheek and decides to let it go, because what else can he really do?

"With that said," Lr clears his throat, gestures back behind him at the image of the Tourist Control Center still up on the screen, "now that you all understand how damaging and dangerous such actions can be, we ask you to consider the already well-known Earth campaign of ' _See Something, Say Something,'_ and report any suspicious activity you may notice to any faculty or staff member."

Lr switches to a new image on the slideshow, one that's titled _Suspicious Activity,_ and is followed by a bullet-point list that kind of makes Morty think about both the PATRIOT Act and that rant Booga went on about Nazis when Tank was driving them all to the town dump to steal books.

"—to better help you understand what we mean by this, we will quickly go over this list of what may be considered 'suspicious activity.'"

Morty slumps down in his seat, ignoring the new lecture in favor scanning all the other students sitting around him and in the seats below. Among the scattered crowd, he picks as many of his classmates as he can find—not all of them are here today—as well as a few other students that he knows in passing. He makes a note of what expressions he can make out on their faces—the ones who clearly look uncomfortable by this entire assembly and then the ones who seem to be oddly focused on paying attention to what's being said. Down in the first few rows, his eyes catch sight of Jessica, though from what he can see, she looks to be more focused on her phone than what's being talked about up on stage.

Surprisingly, there are a couple students who appear to be nodding along to the lecture—possibly just an automatic response and they're actually not paying attention at all—but still, Morty makes a mental red flag in case he runs into any of them. Of course, it's not like he's _planning_ anything, but he does want to find out more about Summer's group, about Tyler, and considering that some of the students here are directly involved, or at least two seniors from his shop are, school is his only real lead right now.

And since it seems that the time for accusations and self-policing has begun, he needs to be careful about who he talks to.

This is going to make finding out more about Tyler a lot harder.

.

* * *

.

For three days following Ms. Marcy's abandonment as their English teacher, they had been stuck with a sub who droned on in a bored tone about verbs and nouns and pronouns even though they'd told the man multiple times that their _literature_ class was more about reading books than about studying proper grammar, so when their wayward English teacher returned on day four, they'd all been pretty relieved—not so much because they enjoyed the books they read, but rather because they preferred it to the alternative.

Her clothes had been worn and mismatched, the outfit of someone who'd prefer to still be in bed, and she'd had a carefully blank expression on her face, her lips pinched down into a tight frown—but she'd walked through that door just as the timer reset for thirty minutes and that's all that really mattered to them. Thinking back on it now, Morty recalls how briskly she'd walked over to the desk and set her bag down, yanking the bag's clasps open with a forceful jerk, and then pulled out a ratty looking copy of _The Outsiders._

When they'd all stood up to go grab a copy of the book from the pile by the windows, Ms. Marcy had told them to sit back down—had said that she would be reading the remainder of the book to them, and to please listen closely. She'd opened up the book to where they last left off—the now infamous fountain scene that had sent her off the deep end in the first place—and calmly began reading to them as if nothing had ever happened and it was just another normal English class.

It had taken Morty about ten minutes into that lesson for him to realize that the scene she was reading was the one she'd described from the original book, and not the alterations made by the Federation. He'd briefly wondered where she got an original copy, his thoughts of course drifting back to all the books Summer's group had smuggled. Most likely though, it'd probably just been a personal copy she owned. She did seem to be a fan of the book.

Walking back into their first session classroom now after the assembly finally finished up, there's a new pile of books waiting on desk for them.

Dressed in her new normal of black sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, Ms. Marcy passes them each a book as they walk by— _Shiloh_ by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, _Federation Edition—_ and gestures for them all to take their seats.

The timer at the head of their classroom is already ticking down from twenty-eight minutes—the assembly having cut a little over halfway through their first session—but surprisingly, Ms. Marcy doesn't seem to be at all flustered or rushed. She stands at the front of their classroom, leaning back against the desk, and asks them in an even tone how their assembly went.

"If you _See Something, Say Something_ ," a girl echoes the words meekly from the front. She shrugs her shoulders helplessly. "They want us to keep an eye out… report any suspicious activity."

Ms. Marcy hums, nods to herself, and asks, "And how do you all feel about this?"

No one answers, and Morty carefully glances around the room at all his classmates' faces, taking in their shuttered expressions and downcast eyes, with just a little bit of nervous fidgeting here and there. When the silence drags on for a moment too long, Morty drops his own gaze down to the new book on his desk—a picture of a beagle puppy staring back at him from the cover—and he flips the book over to skim through the summary on the back, waiting for someone to just start reading since clearly no one plans on answering Ms. Marcy.

But then a boy speaks up from the back, says, "Kinda feel like I'm too young for this crap." When several stares turn his way, he snaps back with a defensive, " _What?_ You're all thinking the same thing!"

"Yeah," a girl cuts in from a few seats over, "So like, I can't even have an opinion now about not liking the Federation without having to worry that someone's gonna tattle on me?"

A quiet murmur of agreement travels through the class, but other than that, no one else speaks up.

"Right," Ms. Marcy says, clapping her hands together once and drawing everyone's attention back to her. She crosses her arms over her chest, stares at them all with a careful look on her face, almost calculating, her eyes narrowed in judgement, and she tells them, "I want you all to keep those thoughts in mind for the future, and just remember that these people you're being told to 'watch out for,' they're you classmates, possibly your friends."

Then she turns to grab her copy of the book off the desk, and a tension seems to relax out of the room. Morty turns the book back over and flips it open to the first page, his classmates around him doing the same. A story about a boy and his dog. Sounds a little dull compared to his _own_ story involving his past canine companion gaining sentience and then leaving for another universe, but considering everything else going on around him at the moment, he's hardly complaining.

"We'll be doing things a bit different for this book," Ms. Marcy said, flipping past the first several pages of her book. "I'll be reading out the author's note for you, which isn't included in your copies of the book, and then you'll all read quietly to yourselves. This is a book you are allowed to take home with you to read on your own time, if you so choose to do so."

Questioning glances are exchanged through the classroom. Morty keeps his eyes on Ms. Marcy, waiting for her next words, but some of his classmates start fanning through the pages, trying to find out what the big deal is. They stop at random points in the book, staring at the pages with frowns and their brows furrowing in growing confusion.

"This isn't a book I'll be testing you on," Ms. Marcy says, "or having you write a report about—though I certainly won't stop you if you do. No, I'm having you read this book so that you may… _widen_ your perspective on things. As a warning though, this book contains some scenes that some of you may find unsettling, as well as inappropriate words and… outdated language, but it's written that way to reflect the beliefs of that time. Now, turn to page fourteen of your books."

Morty opens his supposed dog book and starts flipping through the pages. Nothing looks out of the ordinary at first—the title page says _Shiloh,_ there's a chapter index page, then a dedication, and on to chapter one written in first person point-of-view, describing this small beagle dog—but then Morty moves past that and on to pages eleven, twelve, thirteen, and when he gets to page fourteen, this boy-and-his-dog story cuts away to a brand new chapter one.

Or rather, a _Foreword,_ as it shows written in large, uppercase letters at the top of the page—and it begins with the following sentence:

.

 _After a few months at the Walter E. Fernald State School, seven-year-old Freddie Boyce, skinny with dark eyes and brown hair, could see trouble coming from a distance._

.

"'The incidents and events depicted in this book have been corroborated by multiple sources'," Ms. Marcy says, reading the author's note from her own book as promised, "'including interviews with participants, contemporaneous notes made by attendants, the records of individual state wards, and reports written by officials of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts'."

Morty flips several more pages in, running his fingers along the obvious hand-made stitching in the creases between sets of pages, and comes to the quick realization that someone removed a good center chunk of _Shiloh_ and replaced it with this story instead. A book within a book; it's true contents concealed by the disarming image of a beagle puppy with wide brown eyes.

And that's when he sees it, in tiny lettering at the top corner of a page, the real title of this book.

 _The State Boys Rebellion._

.

* * *

 _TBC_

 _ **Notes:** _

The State Boys Rebellion is a darkly fascinating, (very true) book about some fucked up shit that took place during the American eugenics movement. Yeah, that's right, there was an American eugenics movement, before Nazis were even a thing—in fact, Hitler even got some his ideas on the subject from the US.

Beginning in the early 1900s, scientists believed that stupidity, or 'feeblemindedness,' could be passed on genetically. The response to this was for US health officials to give IQ tests to children to figure out who was 'feebleminded' or 'morons' and force those kids into institutions where they were drugged, abused, denied education, and in some cases even sterilized. Of course, the majority of these kids were completely normal, some were just troubled or had bad home lives, maybe they didn't learn in the 'traditional' way, and some of them had never been able to even attend school, so of course they won't do well on an IQ test.

Anyway, it's been years since I've read this book (forgot about it until just recently) but I was probably subconsciously remembering it when I started writing ITI. There are some definite similarities there.  
Look it up sometime, it's a good read. I recommend it.


	17. Chapter 17

_Thank you again to everyone who has reviewed or favorited this! :)_

 _._

* * *

 **Chapter Seventeen**

.

Mom slaps the heaping scoop of spaghetti down with such force that Morty can feel a fleck of sauce hit his cheek. Her ire isn't directed at him thankfully, but being this close to the line of fire, he does what any smart person would do and smiles up at her in thanks for the meal, only bothering to wipe the sauce away once her back is turned.

Being careful not to be too obvious about it, Morty watches her from the corner of his eye—this ongoing passive aggressive display—and he can't help but pick up on how much more forcefully Mom thumps the scoop of spaghetti down onto Summer's plate, or the way that Summer is very noticeably ignoring Mom; the look on both their faces reaching a whole new level of pissed off.

Summer's also not holding herself as stiffly as she had been last night, like she's fighting to keep the pain back. She must have gone to Mom about her latest injury at some point during the day, got it better treated just like she said she would—and while Morty's happy that his sister is doing better, he can't help but feel a little guilty that the whole situation seems to have resulted in some sort of argument between the two women. Summer going to Mom for better treatment had been his idea after all, and now because of this, Summer has that same sullen expression on her face that she'd always get in the past when she was grounded.

Of course, Summer's eighteen now. Morty's not quite sure if she can even be grounded at this point, but something clearly occurred between her and Mom, and Morty can't help but feel like maybe he should have kept his mouth shut on the whole matter; help Summer with the bandages and then leave her alone. She probably would have gone to Dr. House about the injury later on anyway…

For a moment, Morty just stares down at the meal before him with a faint sense of melancholy. His dinner plate looks like a crime scene photo; a red spatter pattern painting white ceramic. The knotted mess of noodles is unfortunately a familiar sight for him—for all of them really—something that he and Summer secretly refer to as _Angry Spaghetti and Meatballs_ , a popular dinner choice that's usually accompanied by a serving of _Bittersweet Mutual Resentment_ for dessert.

 _'A family recipe that's been passed down for generations now!'_ Summer would jokingly whisper into his ear when they were a lot younger and Morty still wasn't quite used to the anger surrounding the meal.

Morty had been four the first time he remembers Mom cooking it. It had been a week after Dad lost his job at some advertising company and Mom declared she'd be going back to work full-time at the animal hospital.

Summer likes to tease him sometimes that the first time Mom ever made the meal at all had been when she'd found out she was pregnant with him—only twenty years old and just barely starting college, she'd decided that she wouldn't be dropping out of school this time and would just work through it all, let it be Dad's turn to pick up the slack instead of her. Of course, Dad hadn't been too happy about that since he was already bogged down by all the work he had to do during his fourth year earning a degree in advertising—not that those are details Summer's ever actually shared with him in her teasing, his sister isn't _cruel,_ but Morty's heard enough arguments and asked enough questions to figure out the story for himself.

The night Rick first knocked on their door had been the sixth time Morty had been served this meal—that time it had been Dad doing the cooking.

And here they are now with number seventeen, and all Morty can really do is poke at the noodles on his plate and share a brief, commiserating look with his dad across the table, the only one here who, for once, isn't directly involved in this particular argument.

It's no wonder the Federation thinks their major source of food is pasta.

 _'I'll take this dinner to-go, please.'_

For a while, the only sound in the dining room is of forks and knives angrily scraping against ceramic. The tension here is as thick as it had been at school, and Morty finds that however hungry he may have been before, he doesn't have much of an appetite now. Half-heartedly, he picks at his meal, forces himself to swallow down the occasional bite and tells himself that he'll just eat something later.

And then Dad clears his throat and attempts to start some kind of conversation. Morty looks up from his plate and watches how his dad first looks to Summer and Mom, seems to think better on that decision, and then turns his attention over to Morty because that's clearly the safer choice.

"So, uh, Morty," he says, keeping his voice as lighthearted as possible, "how was school today?"

Morty's first thoughts are of the assembly, of _See-Something, Say-Something._ He thinks of the roundabout way the school's guidance counselor basically told them that protesting is bad and not something they should ever do—which then leads to thoughts of Summer's group and how they're most definitely involved—and then to thoughts of stolen books and _The State Boys Rebellion_ hidden beneath the cover about dog named Shiloh _._

It's a minefield of topics, any one of them likely to set his mom or Summer off and blow up in Morty's face if he steps wrong.

"We-we're doing a report in class," he finally settles for saying—if only to break the awkward silence in the room. It's the safest thing he can think of to talk about so long as he doesn't give too many details. Shop that day had only involved watering plants and painting wooden roadblocks a bright yellow—not exactly the best use of any students' time and probably something that would piss Summer off—at least the report sounded kind of academic.

"Oh, really," his dad says, perking up and immediately latching on to the topic. "What's the report on?"

"His-historical events in the galaxy, I-I guess," Morty shrugs, and fumbles for the index card he'd crumpled up and stuffed into his back pocket earlier on in the day. "W-we each got our own event to research. Never heard of mine before."

Flattening out the index card against the table so that he can actually read the topic— _The Liberation of Aythea 14—_ Morty passes it across the table. Dad takes the card and squints down at the scribbled writing on it, reads it off and starts to go on about how _interesting_ the topic sounds. He repeats the name ' _Aythea 14'_ a few times as if he'll somehow recognize the place—like it's just your average Earth history subject, something he learned about back when he was in school.

From the corner of his eye, Morty catches Summer rolling her eyes, and Mom actually looks up from her plate to pay at least a little bit of attention to the conversation. It's not much, but it's better than things had been just moments before—and despite all of Dad's frequently embarrassing and awkward moments, Morty feels grateful for the man's intervention now.

"You know," Dad says, plowing forward despite the fact he's pretty much the only one talking, "you could probably get better research done at the Federation's intergalactic library downtown."

And Morty blinks because… that's actually very useful information. It seems obvious now, but he hadn't even known the Federation had built their own library—there's been so many changes over these past several months that it's hard to keep track of it all—and who knows what kind of information could be available there.

"W-wow, Dad, thanks. That's—that's really helpful."

Dad of course preens, but Morty just throws him a small smile across the table and lets him have his moment.

He doesn't bring up anything else that had happened in his Federation Education class that day—how the only reason they were given these projects is to help them ' _better understand that the Federation is not their enemy'_ and how they should know that _'the Federation has done so much good throughout the galaxy.'_

He also doesn't point out how, whatever _may_ have happened on _Aythea 14_ , what he'll actually be able to find on the subject will most likely just be more Federation propaganda—a bunch of bias bullshit with no real outside source to fact-check the Federation's so-called _facts._

Or in other words, just another pointless task and not worth Morty's time.

.

* * *

.

Lights off, shades closed. Stare up into the dark abyss of his bedroom ceiling and pray for an oblivion that will never come, because there is no God; certainly not one that gives a damn about Morty and his basic human-need for sleep.

The time on his phone reads 1AM and he has been lying awake in his bed for three hours now; alternating between restless irritability where he glares at nothing in particular, and then a state of absolute inactivity—keeping his eyes shut and his body limp and hoping that he can trick his mind into unconsciousness.

It's worse than it had been before—that weekend he had binged on too much music and kept waking up randomly throughout the night—at least then he'd been able to get a few hours' sleep in between each dose. And for the week-and-a-half following that, when it had only been two to three to four songs scattered throughout each day, he'd had no trouble at all getting a good night's rest then.

Maybe his body's just grown too used to that pattern; his sleep cycles thrown off track now that he's cutting the music out of his life. Morty wonders if this is something smokers or alcoholics or addicts go through when they quit. Of course, it could also just be stress. That tends to cause sleepless nights too, and there's certainly a lot to be stressed about right now.

Morty shifts onto his side, pulling his blankets with him and wedging them between bent legs so that half his body is left uncovered. He tucks one arm underneath his pillow and sighs, feeling overheated and uncomfortable. His mattress is too stiff, his pillow too lumpy, and his blankets keep twisting up into more and more of a knotted mess with every restless movement.

He thinks about how easy sleep had been to come by before—not just before the music, but before the Federation, before Rick even, when there had been very little stress in his life beyond the mundane. School, homework, an obvious lack of any real sort of friendship in his life—it had been stressful, sure, but not overly so—not enough for sleep to be an issue for him. Give him any flat surface to lie against or a place to sit down and he'd be out like a light.

There'd of course been an adjustment period once Rick _had_ shown up, dragging all sorts of baggage and insane hijinks with him. Morty distinctly remembers more than a few sleepless nights back then, but after a while, even that became part of the norm; just something that he wasn't really fazed by once whatever multiverse trip they'd gone on was over and done with.

Is that all this is now? Just another adjustment period in his life, something he simply needs more time to get used to—be it the changes to his planet and the Federation's influence, or even just getting used to not having the visions he'd clung to so quickly as a crutch to… to get over Rick?

It's hard to believe that he could grow such an attachment to something he'd only been doing for a little over a week—but sometimes, for some people, all it really takes is one good hit to become an addict, and Morty can admit to himself that he's taken more than a few good hits these past several days.

The temptation to fall back into it has crossed his mind a few times now. It would be so easy, and he finds he really does miss the good visions—the escape they offered and being able to see Rick again, even if it isn't his Rick—but every single time that thought does come up, images of blood in the bathtub quickly accompany it, along with every bad thing that had followed, and Morty grits his teeth and keeps telling himself _no, no, never again._ He just knows things are better this way—they _have_ to be because there's no other alternative here.

Adjusting.

Yeah, that's all it is, just another adjustment to a change in his life. He'll probably be in for a few rough nights and then everything will gradually go back to normal.

This is only _night one_ of him having this problem after all, not anything Morty should really be worried about, and it's not like these past three hours have been spent completely wide awake and jittery. He can feel himself get close sometimes, can feel the fog rolling in and recognize that his thoughts are growing scattered and incoherent.

His problem is that his body will involuntarily jerk—an arm, a leg, his foot or one of his hands, they flinch quite suddenly and completely out of his control—and Morty's brain snaps back online like he's been shot-up with caffeine, leaving him staring up at his ceiling, acutely aware of all the little discomforts he feels until the fatigue creeps back in. It just keeps happening, over and over again, a hump he can't quite get over no matter how increasingly tired he gets.

There's no reason for it either, no noise or anything of the sort that's startling him. The house is quiet enough. Summer's staying in for the night—likely a result of whatever argument her and Mom had. Both of them have already gone to bed hours ago, and Dad has already left for his night shift.

Peeling open eyes that have long-since adjusted to the darkness in his room, Morty can easily make out all of his surroundings—his desk, the bookcase, all the crap still piled up in the corners—and he flops over onto his back once more, kicking his blankets down to the foot of the bed for good measure.

His room just feels so hot. Not stiflingly so, but enough for him to notice. It's a problem they have during the cooler months, when the heat needs to be turned up during the day because the first floor gets so cold—but then someone forgets to turn it back down at night and all that heat rises up to the second floor. By the time they all wake up the next morning, their bedsheets and clothes are clinging to them and damp with sweat.

Morty knows he should just get up and check, turn the thermostat down if need be. He can feel the heat in his cheeks from where he's resting his face against his hands, and his shirt is starting to get a little sticky right down the center of his back. He still doesn't move though; stubbornly determined to stay right where he is in bed and not wake himself up further by actually getting up. He tells himself that as long as he's lying down like this and keeping his eyes closed, that it's still a form of resting—maybe not as good as actually sleeping, but it's still giving his body some of what it needs.

Another several minutes go by, his eyes shut as he focuses on his breathing, and he rolls from his back to his side again—stretches out his arms and bends one leg over the other, searching for some kind of sleeping position that's actually tolerable. No matter what he tries though, nothing feels quite right. It's like his limbs are foreign objects haphazardly attached to his body; long and awkward and bony, and he has no idea what to do with them, how to angle them so that they don't feel strained or too heavy or smushed beneath his own body weight.

Shifting to his back yet again, Morty stretches his arms over his head and wedges his hands underneath his pillow. He lies limp like that for another few minutes, huffs out a frustrated breath and turns his head to the side—but no, that's just as uncomfortable—and with a quiet growl, he rips the pillow out from under his head and throws it across the room.

Slamming his head back against the mattress with a soft _thump,_ Morty's hands curl into fists in his hair as he briefly arches his back up and then flops back over to his side. His arms drop down limp next to him, one hand hanging over the edge of the bed.

The time on his cellphone reads 1:47AM when Morty finally pulls himself out of bed and shuffles downstairs to check the thermostat. It's set to 60°F, which is what it's always set at during the night, but maybe the heater's not working right or spring is showing up early and it's warmer tonight—fuck if he knows—either way he turns the thing down to 55° and calls it good.

Wandering into the living room, not quite ready to go up just yet, Morty sits down on the couch and stares at the blank TV screen through half-lidded eyes. His gaze eventually drifts down to the DVD player, making note of the tiny glowing numbers reading 2:05AM, and in-between slow blinks, he watches that five turn into a six and then a seven. He can't help but notice that the downstairs feels so much more cooler, no need to wait for the temperature to change, and that maybe he should just stay down here instead of putting the effort into dragging his ass back upstairs.

Sinking down sideways on the couch, Morty pulls his feet up to stretch out and curls his arms up against his chest. He exhales slowly, smothers down all the wild, racing thoughts, and for a while there, he lets himself drift.

Then just like before, his leg jerks—just the slightest twitch, but enough to turn the incoherent sleepy babble in his head into a very clearly snarled ' _fuck_.' He screws his eyes shut tighter and curls into a miserable ball on the couch, presses his face into his knees.

 _'Adjusting,'_ he tries to tell himself. _'You're just adjusting.'_

He digs his fingers into his hair again, nails biting into his scalp—can practically _hear_ Rick's voice from more than a few adventures-gone-wrong saying, _'N-nn-no one ever said this would be easy, M-Morty.'_

No—no, of course nothing like this is ever easy.

But maybe… maybe he just needs a little assistance for this first day or so.

A little help.

And his thoughts immediately fall to the prescription sleeping pills his dad sometimes takes during the day now that he has that full-time nightshift job.

One of those and Morty can make it through the rest of the night, get up in the morning with only a little bit of drowsiness and make it to school on time. If the same problem happens tomorrow night, he can use it again—get himself through the next couple days until he's back on track and over the worst of this all.

Honestly, he wishes he'd thought of it earlier, saved himself nearly four hours of aggravation.

The only problem though is that Dad keeps the pills in his nightstand. Morty definitely doesn't want to wake up Mom and possibly piss her off even more than she already is. Plus, he's not sure what she would think about him using Dad's sleeping pills, and as much as he feels like a hypocrite after the trouble Summer got in with Mom, this is one of those cases where Morty would rather ask for forgiveness than for permission.

Filled with yet another irritating rush of alertness, this time because of what he plans on doing, Morty creeps back upstairs before he can think better on the matter. Bare feet step quietly along the carpet—heal-to-toe, heal-to-toe—passing by his room and then Summer's room and further down to the end of the hall where the master bedroom lies.

The door is propped open just so slightly, as dark and still inside as the rest of the house, and Morty hovers outside it for a brief, hesitant moment. Now is not the time for second-guessing though, not after this many hours of trying and failing to sleep. It's just one little pill, one little pill and he'll be back to his room—and when he really stops to think about it, it's not even all that different from last night when Dad gave him those pills to stop his panic attack.

Mind made up, Morty slips into his parents' room and immediately moves around to Dad's side of the bed. Mom's back is to him, her breathing slow and steady and her blonde hair fanned out across her pillow. She has one arm out and hugging the blankets up to her neck, and Morty watches her for a brief moment to make sure she is in fact asleep before he turns his attention down to Dad's nightstand.

The moment he grabs the handle though and pulls the top drawer open, Mom's sleepy voice drifts over his way and Morty finds himself frozen in place.

"Jerry…?"

The faint sound of wood dragging against wood had been the only noise the drawer had made, but somehow it's enough to wake her up—' _Or maybe she hadn't been sleeping at all'—_ and Morty can only stand there guiltily as Mom turns on the lamp next to her and blinks up at him with tired eyes.

"Morty?"

She runs one hand through her hair, pushes tangled strands back from her face, and glances over at the digital clock set up on her own nightstand. Her brow furrows in confusion, and when she turns back to him, Morty shuts the drawer to Dad's nightstand. He drops his hands down to his sides and hopes she doesn't notice.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" she asks.

"I'm, um…" he trails off, twists his hands up in the hem of his shirt, but she just keeps staring at him, waiting, so reluctantly Morty admits, "I-I couldn't sleep."

"So you thought you'd try one of Jerry's sleeping pills," she says, catching on immediately. There's no hint of accusation or disappointment in her tone, just a sleepily stated fact—regardless though, Morty drops his eyes to the ground, shrugs helplessly and can't help but feel a little bit ashamed.

"Those pills are strong, Morty," she says around a yawn, rubbing at her eyes with one hand. "You'll need to be up in about four hours and those pills will last at least six, maybe more."

He nods along to her statement, still not meeting her eyes. He'd kind of known that already, but hadn't really cared at the time. He'd figured if he could drag himself up long enough to make it to school, he could sit at the back of the classroom and sleep through first session.

"You should only take half of one," she says. "That should be more than enough."

Morty's eyes dart back up to her, startled, and the only think he can think to say is, "Uhhh… r-really?"

She nods, lies back down on the bed and stuffs one hand underneath her pillow. Keeping her head turned towards him still, with her other hand she holds one finger up in the air and says, "On one condition though," and here she pats her hand down on Dad's side of the bed a few times, says, "You need to sleep here tonight if you do take it. You've never had this medicine before, and I don't want to have to worry about you having some kind of reaction to it where I can't keep an eye on you."

"Y-you'd be sleeping too," he points out.

"Mother's instinct—and don't give me that look, I _have_ it."

"A-alright," he concedes after a moment's pause, both to her condition and to her insistence on 'Mother's Instinct.' It's not that he thinks she's a bad mother or anything, but she's hardly the most—uh, _traditional._

Mom breaks one of the white pills in half for him and Morty makes a quick trip to the bathroom to stick his mouth under the faucet and drink the pill down—not about to be bothered grabbing a cup at this hour. Returning to his parents' room, Mom waits until he's curled up on Dad's side of the bed before she turns the lights off. She tells him that the pill should start making him feel drowsy, but to let her know if he starts to feel any strange side effects—shortness of breath, a tightness in his chest, any kind of itchiness or discomfort at all. Even as half asleep as she is, she's still able to list off all the possible side effects with what they all call her ' _Doctor Voice.'_

"Yeah, o-ookay," he murmurs, shutting his eyes and turning his head away from her overprotective gaze. She may be lying down herself, but Morty can tell that she won't be settling down to sleep anytime soon.

It feels a little strange to be sleeping in his parents' bed again—if only because the last time he'd done it had been when he was around eight. When Morty thinks back on it, he can't quite remember the reason why—something to do with a silly childhood fear. He understands his mom's reasoning for it now though. While he seriously doubts half a pill will be enough to do any kind of real damage to anyone, even someone as twiggy as himself, he knows she's just trying to be careful, and that this is really more for her own peace of mind than it is because he's in legitimate danger of having a bad reaction to the medication.

She's been worried about both him and Summer a lot lately, and they haven't exactly been giving her a reason not to be.

With his eyes closed and his hands folded over his stomach, he starts to feel it after a little while, the pill's drowsy effects seeping in and gently wrapping his brain up in a soft cloud. It's different from all his previous attempts to force sleep in the hours before—more powerful—and to Morty's relief, he begins to drift off even despite the occasional limb twitches. He falls further and further down until everything fades out completely and there's _nothing,_ not even dreams—

But then consciousness slowly slides back into place and he doesn't even need to open his eyes to know that it's still not morning yet—he can tell through his eyelids that it's too dark in the bedroom to even be close.

From a few feet away from him, Morty can hear his mom's quiet snores; time has certainly passed by, just not nearly enough of it—and a tiny ball of helpless hysteria starts to crystalize in his chest, because _why_ is he awake _again?_ How is any of this fair?

After a moment, he realizes that his neck aches faintly and there's an itch along the inside of his arm—possibly the cause of what woke him up, and definitely the sort thing of Mom would want to hear about—but a small fragment of that medicated sleepy feeling lingers in his head like floating cotton.

And Morty's just so _tired,_ so at the end of his rope and doesn't want to deal with this; it's just easier to latch on to the drowsy feeling and drag himself back down to sleep. The last few hours of the night go on like this, drifting in and out until the alarm clock on Mom's nightstand goes off and Morty snaps away fully with no real idea of how much sleep he actually got. His eyes feel overly wide as he sits upright in bed and he thinks about how maybe he should have taken the whole pill after all.

The ache in his neck is still there, but it's no worse than it was before, and while the itch seems to have curiously migrated up to his shoulder, when Morty looks, there's no rash or any other sign of irritation, only his usual pale skin. If they're symptoms at all, they're mild at best—not like chest pains or shortness of breath—and hell, a shitty night's sleep and sweaty clothes could also easily explain away a stiff neck and skin irritation.

So when Mom climbs out of her side of the bed with a stretch and a yawn and asks him how he feels, Morty just smiles at her and tells her that he's fine. He tells her that he's feeling better now and he thanks her for being cool about the whole thing too.

Then he gets up to get ready for school, scratching at his shoulder as he walks down the hall to his room.

* * *

 _TBC_


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

.

Drowsiness lingers like a pressure behind his eyes trying to drag his lids closed—just for a brief moment, please, an extra-long blink and he thinks he might actually sleep and get a fragment of the rest and revitalization he needs—and Morty feels so incredibly frustrated that this is hitting him now and _not_ last night when he could have actually used it. About twenty minutes into his second session, he comes up with the idea to go to the nurse and see if he can take a nap, because it's not like he's actually processing any of the lesson anyway—something about… bartering and rocket fuel? He doesn't even know.

His instructor, Crux, takes one look at him though and flicks a dismissive wing at his request, telling Morty that he looks healthy enough to her even though he's pretty positive he looks like absolute shit. A few of his classmates glance his way, giving him sympathetic looks, but none of them speak up in his defense. Of course, Morty doesn't really expect them to. None of them are his friends, and honestly, this isn't one of those moments worth fighting about—kind of like a 'pick your battles' type of thing.

Briefly though, Morty's reminded of a scene from some TV show or movie—he can't remember which—where a student had stabbed a pencil through their hand after their teacher had told them that they couldn't leave class. Obviously he wouldn't actually do that, he's not crazy, but as he twirls his own pencil between his fingers, he will admit that the thought does make him smile a little.

He manages to make it through the rest of the session with his head propped up on one hand, twirling that pencil between the fingers of his other hand and occasionally pausing to scratch at his shoulder. When the bell rings for lunch, Morty startles back upright, blinking rapidly and filled with an alert sense of clarity—his mind playing out its own rendition of _the facts are these:_

 _You're at school._

 _Second session is over._

 _It's time for lunch._

 _You can leave…_

 _… **Dipshit** —_

 _—you can **leave.**_

 **_LEAVE, M-Mm-Morty!_ **

He exhales a shuddering breath, shakes his head to clear the sudden intrusion of Rick's voice from his mind and scrabbles to get all his crap together, hurriedly stuffing it all into his backpack. He can hear the sound of pages ripping, possibly his textbook or his notebook, but can't find it in himself to care—just slings his backpack over one shoulder and rushes out of the room along with several other classmates who seem to be in a hurry. Crux calls after them as they go, reminding them all of the reports they should be working on. It's the only thing she's said in the past two hours that Morty's actually even registered, but he grabs onto the mental subject change and smothers all thoughts of Rick with it, playing the words out on repeat in his mind, _'Liberation of Aythea 14—Aythea 14, Aythea 14…'_

Traveling with the current of students but weaving around the slower walkers, Morty's pace doesn't relax until he reaches the stairs heading down to the second floor—and that's when all the irritating chatter he's been hearing snippets of all day worms its way through his internal filters.

While Morty himself has been feeling tired and lackluster in general since he got up this morning, for the rest of the school, there's a thrum of excitement in the air. All around him, his classmates are buzzing about the field trips they'll be going on and the places they'll get to visit—places he'll never be allowed to go to. They'd whispered about it during class and talked about it in the halls, and as Morty reaches the cafeteria now, it's practically being shouted about over the general din of fifty-plus students all talking at once. Even with the earplugs he stuffs in, Morty can still hear the muffled enthusiasm in their voices.

You'd almost think the halls _hadn't_ been filled with a quiet fear just yesterday and that there'd been no disturbing assembly—like the promise of a fun trip is enough to make everyone pretend for one second that the Federation _isn't_ taking a giant shit all over their civil liberties.

Sighing, Morty pushes his way into the crowd with the singular goal of finding something to eat. He hadn't packed any food this morning, too tired to bother, and he's not in the mood for pasta again after last night which rules out anything the cafeteria's serving, but Mom gave him six dollars before he left and he knows of a few kids who are in the business of selling lunches now.

Tracking one of them down to the back corner of the cafeteria isn't too hard, and he pulls out his earplugs to barter with her—a sophomore girl who has a generous spread of food laid out before her. She's flanked by two other sophomores, a guy and girl both much taller than her, and all three of them are wearing _My Little Pony_ hoodies. For five bucks, he gets half a turkey sandwich and a brownie—she even throws in a bruised apple for free, saying _"Your pathetic face is making me sad"_ —and with his last dollar, he gets a bottle of water from the vending machine.

Lunch has always been one of his least favorite activities at school if only because awkwardly finding a seat among the crowd is a hellish endeavor, especially now that he's become some kind of social pariah, but today Morty just doesn't have the energy to worry about it. He pops his earplugs back in and sits down at the first free space he finds. If anyone gives him any kind of look or bothers to shift away from him, he doesn't notice—just keeps his eyes down on his meal and focuses on eating.

By the time lunch is over, Morty has his head lying down sideways against the table with his eyes half-closed, not trusting himself to close them fully without falling asleep and missing third session—though he doesn't really think that would matter much. He'll be the only one there while all his classmates go off on their trip; he can't imagine he'll be doing anything important. Still, when he sees everyone around him getting up to leave at the sound of a bell he doesn't hear, Morty drags himself up with them.

As he reaches his shop down on the first floor though and sees all his classmates practically bouncing around with jittery anticipation, Morty bypasses them all completely, cutting through the classroom and the back workroom until he reaches the door out to the greenhouse. Seeing that there's nobody else out here with him this time, he shuts the door behind him and pulls his earplugs out, tucking them away in his pocket.

It's peacefully quiet. The vents on the greenhouse's roof are propped open and the only sound he can hear is the wind blowing through—his classmates' voices not loud enough to travel this far. He has about ten minutes that he can hide out here for, ten minutes before all his classmates leave for their trip and whatever instructor was picked to stay behind and watch him comes to get him for his solo lesson.

Morty breathes out through his nose slowly, calmly, and walks the aisles of the greenhouse, trailing one hand along the steel frames of the plant benches and slipping his other hand beneath the collar of his shirt to claw at the itch on his shoulder. He's kept an eye on it throughout the day, but his skin remains rash-free—nothing there aside from the pink scratch marks he's causing himself. Morty could swear that the itch has spread just a bit towards his collarbone, but he might just be imagining it. When there's no actual sign of anything there, it's hard to know for sure.

He stops between the two benches he'd planted all those spiky seeds on. The tiny blue nubs have sprouted into thick three-inch-tall seedlings and Morty can already tell that they'll need to be repotted soon; it might even be the task his instructor will give him for the day. They're as strange-looking as every other plant in this greenhouse, and Morty will admit it's been interesting to watch them grow these past two weeks. Their stems have all grown in a kind of zig-zagging pattern, and rather than leaves, they have these tiny, root-like strands puffing out in random patches.

When he'd asked one of his instructors what they were called, the insectoid had rattled off a kind of crackling screech noise—a species name entirely impossible for humans to pronounce. Morty had started to call them blue zig-zag plants after that—certainly not the most creative name, but then, neither is ' _mega trees.'_ When the girls in his shop heard him though, they'd all started endearingly calling the plants _Morty's crooked children._ Somehow that morphed into the name _crooked blues,_ and from there, the name seemed to stick. Their greenhouse instructor was less than amused, but Morty just shrugged and went along with it.

He presses a finger into the slimy soil of one of the plug trays, down by the base of the stem, and checks to see how much water puddles up in the imprint—if it's enough or if they'll need to be watered more. Whatever planet the crooked blues come from, they're used to a very wet environment, and Morty's been keeping track that they're watered enough each day. He'll admit he's a little curious to see what they'll turn into. It's not like their real species' name is something he can look up in a book or type into a computer or anything.

Moving down the line of plug trays, losing track of time checking each one, Morty hears them before he sees them—the faint rumble of ship engines coming from the front of the building where the buses always park. He looks up through the glass paneling of the greenhouse in time to see them taking off, five small shuttles rising up over the high school, all of them carrying his classmates inside. They climb higher and higher into the air and then take off in a quick shot, each one heading in a different direction and shrinking into the distance until Morty can't see them through the clouds anymore.

He's been hearing about the trips all day despite his efforts to block it out with his earplugs. Welding, Electrical, Ship Maintenance and Engine Repairs are all going to the massive docking bay floating in Earth's orbit. Culinary, Cosmetology, and Hospitality will be visiting a popular inter-species tourist resort out in another section of the Milky Way. Jessica's shop, Telecommunications, will be going to the Federation's newly built interstellar data transmission satellite. As for the remaining shops—Masonry, Carpentry, HVAC, Plumbing, and Morty's own shop of Horticulture—they'll all be flying out to different sections of Mars that the Federation is in the process of terraforming.

Compared to the things Morty's done in the past, these trips his classmates are going on are all pretty tame—nothing he'd really be missing out on—and yet… he can't help but feel left out… _left behind_ … and the silence in the greenhouse is enough to make his ears ring.

Eight months of normality and mediocrity stuck on Earth and suddenly a trip to Mars sounds as thrilling as a trip to a different dimension he's never seen before.

From over his shoulder, the greenhouse door creeks open on its hinges and Morty immediately picks up on the familiar clicks of his greenhouse instructor's many short legs. Altaynx. She's an older bug—her exoskeleton scratched and washed out—more centipedal in appearance than the common grasshopper look you see among the rest of the Federation. She moves a bit slower than the other horticulture instructors and she's likely to forget your name, but she has a sharp mind when it comes to most plant species out there, and with her many legs, she can easily maneuver between the floor, ceiling and walls of the greenhouse. It was decided early on that the sprawling glass structure is her domain alone. The other horticulture instructors rarely venture out this way.

"I-I guess you drew the short straw then?" Morty says, turning to face her.

She clicks her mandibles at him, quirks her head and says, "Short straw?"

"Uhh, I mean, you-you're stuck watching me," he says, fumbling for an explanation.

She makes a kind of throaty crackling noise, something Morty's come to recognize as an insectoid's version of a confirming hum.

"No," she says. "I am benefited from watching you. Now I only have one dirt child I watch instead of many."

It's another difference between her and the more grasshopper-like Federation members—she doesn't speak full English. Morty's classmates have theorized that whatever translation device the aliens use to speak with must be faulty for her, but Morty thinks it just has something to do with how much different her language probably is compared to the more common languages used in the Federation; like the translation device can't quite bridge the gap between English and whatever it is she's speaking. Whatever the reason, Altaynx doesn't seemed to be bothered by it.

"So w-what'll I be doing today?" Morty asks, deciding to ignore the 'dirt child' comment. He and his classmates have heard it plenty of times before from Altaynx, and it's certainly better than some of the _other_ nicknames Morty's heard—

"Convict child will be digging."

Ah, yes. That's one right there, reserved especially for Morty, though thankfully only in situations like this one where none of his other classmates are around.

' _Wait—'_

"Digging?"

Crackling out a few foreign words to herself, Altaynx arches her body to the side and climbs up the far left wall, effortlessly maneuvering across the steel framing of the greenhouse in a graceful weaving curve with not a single claw making contact with the glass. As she passes him by, she gestures for him to follow with a wave of several clawed limbs and heads towards the far left corner of the greenhouse.

Wordlessly, Morty follows after her, watching as she steps up onto the greenhouse's angled ceiling and eventually comes to a stop three benches over and several benches back from where he'd been standing. She settles her body in a spiral against the ceiling, her upper half hanging down in a curve so that she's looking at him right-side-up, and with three sets of her front claws, she gestures around herself.

The area has been cleared out, whatever plants or benches that had been there before have been moved to make space. All that remains now are cement walkways and a long stretch of gravel flooring that the benches are normally set up over.

There's also a wheelbarrow and a shovel waiting for him in the empty space, which frankly doesn't speak well for how the rest of his day is likely to go—' _Digging_ ' she'd said—sounds fucking awesome.

"I had two elder children clear out space this morning," Altaynx explains. "Now you will dig up space. Make a very deep wide hole."

She stretches out her front claws and curves her body this way and that to point out just how big of a hole she wants dug. She's of course speaking of the gravel flooring, not the cement walkways, but from the looks of it, she wants the hole to be about the size of two benches—which would pretty much make it an eight-by-eight-foot hole—so it's not exactly an _easy_ task.

"Make it," she pauses to crackle out a humming noise, "Three foots deep."

Morty practically wilts at the prospect. If he already feels this tired now, he'll be practically _dead_ by the time school ends—although… he'll admit that might help him sleep better tonight.

Still, he can't help his forlorn tone when he asks, "W-what's it even for?"

"We are to make the water environment," she says with a serene nod of her head, her mandibles clicking, "I found idea when I ordered aquatic specimens by mistake. No place to put them, so they are the _dead_ , but I have thoughts that it can be fun lesson for future." She makes a noise that kind of sounds like a laugh, and wriggles her antennae at him, saying, "I would, how you say, lose antennae if not attached to head."

Morty musters up a weak smile at the remark, but the older insectoid seems to not notice or care, already twisting away from him and furling her upper body back against the ceiling with the rest of herself. She does turn back to face him when he doesn't immediately get to work, looking down at him with this wide, expectant stare and not moving from her spot until she sees him (very reluctantly) grab the shovel out of the wheelbarrow—once he does though, she makes a satisfied crackling noise and twists around to leave, scuttling across the ceiling and down and out the door near the front

Morty's shoulders slump further once she's gone, and he glances over at the digital clock that's positioned high up on the wall over the back exit door of the greenhouse. One hour and forty-eight minutes counting down until school's over. One hour and forty-eight minutes of hard labor digging a giant hole.

Turning to face this new task with a long drawn-out groan of miserable discontent, Morty jabs the shovel down into the ground with a loud _clank_ of stone against metal. The gravel puts up a lot of resistance—these aren't small pebbles he's digging through—and Morty has to throw his full body weight into it just to make any leeway. Growling, he stomps one foot down against the back of the shovel head until it sinks down far enough—manages to dig up his first heaping scoop of gravel after some struggling and dumps it into the wheelbarrow.

From there, things get a little bit easier. Morty's relieved to find that the gravel only goes about three inches down before he hits dirt, so if he works outward from the first hole he dug, the gravel's easier to shift out of place.

He sets to work at removing the rocky layer first, scooping each shovel-full into the wheelbarrow and pretty much mapping out the entire space he'll have to dig up. The entire process takes him about an hour to do and he has to go empty the wheelbarrow out behind the greenhouse twice, but in the end, he's left with a nice cleared-out space; eight-by-eight feet of flat, unobstructed dirt—

And however many cubic feet of it he has left to dig up.

Slowly panting, Morty leans against the shovel with his hands curled over the end of the handle and his forehead pressed against them. His arms are shaking and his shirt's starting to cling to his back and chest with sweat. He still has around forty minutes of work ahead of him, forty minutes left of shoveling. He could stop for a little bit, but there's a high chance Altaynx will know if he doesn't put the full effort into it. She's annoyingly intuitive like that—just like how she always seems to walk in on him and his classmates the moment they stop working on something.

Tilting his head sideways against the handle, Morty eyes the door at the front of the greenhouse even now, half expecting her to burst in and ask him why he's not working.

Straightening back up with one last forceful exhale, Morty positions his foot against the back of the shovel head and drives the blade down deep once more—and while he's not exactly proud of his next thought, he won't lie to himself about it—when he digs up his next scoop of dirt, there's a pretty big part of him that's hoping his classmates are having a much more miserable time than he is, like maybe Mars is actually really boring, or the only reason they're there is to do some menial task that's even more bullshit than his own.

Morty grunts as he digs the blade down again, beads of sweat rolling down his face and stinging his eyes as he scoops shovel-full after shovel-full of dirt into the wheelbarrow. The ground, unfortunately, is packed down pretty tight. It's not nearly as hard as digging through the gravel had been, but it still takes a fair amount of effort, and by the time he finishes up with only ten minutes left on the clock before he can leave, he feels weak and shaky and practically collapses down into the hole he dug, the shovel clattering down next to him.

All that work and he'd only managed to dig down an uneven half-foot.

 _'And I'll have to come in and do it all over again tomorrow.'_

Sitting there in the dirt, his legs splayed out in front of him and huffing for air, Morty leans forward and presses his palms to his eyes, forcefully wiping away all the sweat and frustration _._ Shifting one hand up, he pushes back damp, sweaty bangs and drags curled fingers up and over the top of his head and down to the back of his neck—digs his fingernails in and scratches forcefully—while his other hand peels back the sweaty collar of his shirt to scratch at his shoulder and across to his collarbone—

And then slides that hand down the front of his shirt to scratch a path from his stomach down to his side.

There's still no sign of a rash, no indicator of any real irritation, but Morty can't deny the obvious anymore.

The itch is definitely spreading.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	19. Chapter 19

**[Violence Warning for this chapter!]**

* * *

 **Chapter Nineteen**

.

Simultaneously clawing at his stomach and shoulder and pulling at his shirt, Morty twists in a circle on the tile to kick the bathroom door shut behind him. He shucks off his shirt first and turns to face the mirror, can't keep his scratching hands off himself even as his eyes rove over his reflection and the blotches of pink irritated skin on his shoulder and smudged across his stomach. He flattens his hands over the marks, feeling for tiny bumps or some kind of texture, like maybe there's something there that's too small to see—tiny bite marks, or a rash, or some other kind of skin condition.

There's nothing there though, save for that faint pink from too much scratching. His skin is smooth and unmarred even as his body feels under attack by some invisible enemy—and there's nothing he can do to fix it and make it better—just sit back and enjoy his stay in hell because he'll be scratching until he tears his flesh down to the bone.

Hands fumbling with the zipper to his jeans, Morty slips off his pants and boxers and tugs off his socks, tossing them in a heap by the door as he moves over to the bathtub. With one hand still scratching at his shoulder, he turns the water on to lukewarm and switches on the showerhead. He wants to set the temperature to scalding, burn the itch off of him, but worries that making the water too hot might just make the itching worse. Without knowing exactly what's wrong, it's best to err on the side of caution.

And Morty _knows_ he should just go to his mom about this, but she's at work right now and he doesn't want to call her up and make her have to end her shift early, and frankly, he just… kind of feels ridiculous about this whole thing. It's not like he's injured. His throat isn't swelling up and he's not breaking out in hives or a rash.

He's just itchy, that's all. It's irritating, sure, but he's not injured and he certainly wouldn't call this 'suffering.' Here Summer is just down the hall with an actual wound gouged into her shoulder—if she can handle that without much fuss, then Morty can certainly handle some itching.

He steps into the bathtub, tugging the curtain closed behind him and quickly moving under the shower spray. Hands moving rapidly from his neck to his shoulders and down his chest, Morty soaks himself down, both front and back, and runs his fingers back and forth through his hair, making sure he's fully drenched before he grabs a washcloth off the corner shower rack. Although he has a lot of sweat and dirt to wash through, he forgoes using any soap—not wanting to run the risk of that adding to his irritation—and immediately sets to work at scrubbing his body down.

He works his way from top to bottom, from his face to his neck and down each arm, then his chest to his back and down his legs to his feet, washing away the day's filth—the sweat that beaded off him and coated him like a second skin, the dirt that somehow managed to sift through his clothes, caking against his shins and his feet and painting grimy patterns up his arms and around his waist. The water runs in tinted brown swirls around his feet and down the drain, and Morty has to rinse the washcloth out a few times before it runs clear.

He focuses on the points of irritation after that, scrubbing over all the faint pink markings on his body with the washcloth, like he might just be able to scour the itch away if he rubs hard enough. The spot stretching from his shoulder and over to his collarbone, the one on his stomach that reaches down to his side—he scrubs and scrubs until the itch turns into a numbing tingle. A sweet relief in comparison, and Morty bites down on the inside of his cheek and thinks _fuck it._

He grabs the showerhead off its holder and turns the knobs until the water's blasting cold. His body flinches away unconsciously, but he steels himself against the motion, presses one hand flat against the tiled wall in front of him and holds the biting stream of cold water right up to his shoulder, moving the showerhead back and forth across the itch until even that tingling feeling goes completely numb. He repeats the process with the stretch of skin along his stomach, and by the time he's done and shutting the water off, he feels half-frozen and his body's quaking with shivers—but jesus, for just this brief moment, he doesn't feel a thing, no itch or irritation, _nothing._

With shaking steps, he wobbles out of bathtub and grabs a towel out of the bathroom closet. He's an uncoordinated mess and he has to struggle to make his hands cooperate enough to ruffle the towel through his hair and wrap it around his waist. In spite of that though, Morty smiles through chattering teeth. He knows this is just a temporary solution, but as he presses trembling fingers against the icy skin on his stomach and feels not even a hint of his prior irritation, he counts it as a success.

' _Now I just need to make sure the itch stays away.'_

The solution is simple really, especially now that he can actually _think_ without all that frantic itching driving him crazy. It's probably the same solution his mom would have come up with had Morty gone to her in the first place about this. In the medicine cabinet behind the sink mirror, he finds an opened box of Benadryl. It's pretty much the go-to antihistamine for anyone having allergy problems—not that he necessarily thinks that this is some kind of allergy, but the medicine helps with itching all the same and that's good enough for Morty.

There's also the extremely helpful side-effect of drowsiness to look forward to. Basically a win-win in his book.

He takes the whole box with him back to his room, bare feet padding down a quiet hallway with one hand holding the towel around his waist, and his dirty clothes and the medicine tucked under his opposite arm. Dad's still sleeping off his work shift, Summer's shut herself up in her room, and Mom won't be back for a few hours. Whether they'll all actually be sitting down for dinner tonight or just scrounging around separately for leftovers, Morty knows he has some time before he needs to worry about it.

He shuts his bedroom door behind him and dumps his dirty clothes on the floor near his dresser. Setting the box of allergy pills down on his nightstand, Morty quickly dries the rest of himself off before re-wrapping the towel around his waist and flopping down on his bed. For a while he just lies there, his hands resting against his cold stomach as his body shivers and slowly heats up a warm spot on the blankets beneath him. Morty thinks he even dozes off for a little bit—at the very least, all thought blanks out on him—but then his body begins to thaw and he starts to feel it again, a very slight tingle on his shoulder and stomach.

Grumbling to himself, but not about to wait around for it to get worse, Morty grabs the box of Benadryl off his nightstand and pries one of the pills out of its plastic individual packaging. He swallows it down with a drink from his water bottle and stubbornly drops back down against his pillow.

Then he shuts his eyes and waits—and curls his hands into fists against his stomach when that tingle starts to turn into a faint itch once more.

The drowsy sensation doesn't float in as quickly as it had with Dad's sleeping pills, and Morty digs his nails into his palms until his hands shake out of frustration. He can feel it on his other shoulder now and on a small spot at the back of his neck, the slightest buzz of irritation, an itch asking to be scratched.

Morty uncurls his fingers, starts with a very light scratch along his stomach and works his way up.

Scratching, scratching—

' _This is so much easier without clothes on.'_

Scratching…

…An hour in and he finally drifts off.

.

* * *

.

 _It starts out the same—blood filling up the bathtub, soaking in around all that ice—even now a small lucid part of himself is aware of the echo, that's he's watched this scene play out many times over—Rick's laugh, the whir of the saw and all those bloody tools—_

 _Wake up._

 _He steps towards the bathtub, moves forward to help because **opening a ribcage is a two-person job—**_

 _Wake up, this isn't real._

 _He crosses the space between the toilet and the bathtub, walks up to where Rick's sitting on a stool, scooping cups of ice into the cooler for the heart he's about to cut out—_

 _And Morty's hand flies forward in a fist, colliding with the side of Rick's neck, and suddenly the scene changes—the bathroom around him melting away to surroundings that are dark and indistinct. Morty squints his eyes, but everything's too fuzzy to make out, just a bunch of hazy shapes swaying back and forth against each other—and then there's Rick, standing a few paces away from him and blurring around the edges just like everything else around them. In comparison though, he's the only thing Morty can see with any kind of clarity._

 _Rick's shoulders are hunched defensively with his fists help up in front of him—oddly dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and an old band t-shirt that looks entirely out of place on him given his age. A wide smirk is stretched across the man's face, his form fragmenting and breaking off at the edges as he shifts his weight from foot to foot—it's the look of someone who's not only ready for a fight, they're excited about it too—and Rick has that look directed entirely at Morty._

 _"That the best you got?" Rick says loudly, jeering, and he slaps a hand against the side of his neck, right where Morty had hit him. Around them, a roar of noise rises up from the moving shapes, but it sounds muffled and faint compared to Rick's words; a muted sound that Morty can't really pick up on and Rick doesn't seem to pay much mind to._

 _"Come on, kid, fight me!" Rick shouts, drawing Morty's attention back to him in a snap, and then the man darts forward and nails Morty right in the shoulder with his fist— **pow—** a hit that sends him staggering back a few paces. Automatically, Morty claps one hand against the point of impact, pressing down on the flare of pain like he can force it away—and already Rick's holding his fists up in front of himself again, preparing for a second strike. _

_"Hit me," Rick says, quieter now, more serious. "Give 'em a good show."_

 _Morty's hand drops down from his shoulder and curls up into a fist at his side—and then his body's moving completely of its own volition. Like a thing possessed, his fist draws back and his body lunges forward. He swings at Rick with a wide, roundhouse punch and his fist collides with the man's cheek, snapping his head to one side— **bam** —and Morty's knuckles are aching from hitting Rick's cheekbone with such force, but Rick turns back to him with a grin saying, "Good, just like that—"_

 _And then he swings forward and clips Morty's chin with his own fist._

 _Internally, Morty balks at the impact—the situation so startling that he wants to back off and regroup—but the shapes are roaring around them and his body has stopped listening to him completely. He's charging at Rick and his grandfather's racing to meet him and from there things devolve into a full-out brawl. He kicks Rick in the shin and his fist collides with the man's face until blood's streaming down from a broken nose—and Rick's hitting Morty's chest, his arms, his back, and Morty can't help but notice how Rick never goes for his face again, how his hits aren't all that painful, and the whole time Rick's saying things like, "Hit me, kid! Come on, hit me **harder!**_ _You can do better than that!"_

 _Give 'em a good show, he'd said._

 _Rick falls back, his form blurring in and out and splintering off into tiny shards as he drops to the ground when Morty kicks out his legs—just all part of the show—and as he lets Morty pin him down, he grins up with bloody teeth and says, "Time for the finale."_

 _Morty swings his fist down—_

 _._

—and snaps awake with a startled breath, peeling his eyes open in an uneven blink. _It's dark_ is the first thing he notices; dark and probably late at night, and as he rolls over to his side and stretches his arm out to grab his cellphone off the nightstand, he realizes that not only is he still just wrapped in a towel, he also has a blanket draped over him now. Someone from his family must have come into his room and covered him up; probably saw how deeply he was sleeping and decided to leave him be.

His phone lights up with the time and Morty squints into it with a groan. It's only nine at night. He's been asleep for about four hours now—not too bad, but still, _longer_ would have been more preferable. Flopping over onto his back again, Morty presses a hand over his stomach, right where some of the irritation had been. He can barely feel it at all right now, so at the very least, the medicine's still helping with keeping the itching at bay.

Still though, when he pushes himself up into a sitting position, it's with weak and shaking arms. Rising up from the depths of a Benadryl buzz is what rising from the dead must feel like. He can feel the thump of his heart in his chest, and like with Dad's sleeping pills, his head feels stuffed full of cotton, his thoughts sluggish and his perception muffled. ' _Drowsy'_ the box says—more like don't make any fucking plans because you're about to fall into a mini coma.

There is no way he should even be conscious at this point, and he seriously doubts he would be had it not been for that dream— _nightmare._ He can almost feel it right now, the impact of his fists colliding with flesh; knuckles smashing Rick's nose in. A shiver runs up his spine at the imagined sensations—because _jesus,_ where the fuck had that all even come from? Are weird dreams a side effect of the Benadryl?

Or maybe he's just seen and experienced so many different things these past few weeks, between all the visions and all the crap going on in his day-to-day life—and this is just his brain's way of piecing it all together into something abstract and nonsensical. It certainly had all the hazy qualities of a dream that makes no sense—definitely not one of his visions, which had all been extremely vivid—and listening carefully now, there's no music that Morty can pick up on, nothing that would have triggered him.

Glancing briefly at his closed door, Morty drags himself out of bed, the blanket and towel puddling on the floor behind him. He shuffles over to his dresser to pull a pair of boxers on, doesn't bother with a shirt because his limbs feel too heavy and clumsy. His joints are a little sore too, but not overly so, just an ache likely brought on from all the shoveling he'd done at school.

He's also starving. The last time he ate was around noon today and it wasn't exactly a big meal either.

Stuffing his earplugs in just to be on the safe side, Morty shuffles out of his room and down the stairs with all the enthusiasm of a slow-moving zombie. He bypasses the living room where he can make out the flickering light of the TV—someone's clearly up, but he doesn't check to see who—and he heads straight into the kitchen where he finds a plate of food wrapped up for him in the fridge. It's marked with a sticky note that has his name and a smiley face written on it, which makes him think that Dad was probably the one to wrap it up for him.

Chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans—a good sign that Mom and Summer aren't as angry at each other as they had been yesterday. Morty pops it in the microwave to heat up and folds his arms across his chest to wait, leaning sideways against the counter and watching the plate slowly spin through half-lidded eyes.

He's not expecting the hand that closes down on his shoulder—even knowing that he's not the only one awake in the house right now—and suddenly he's like a dog with its hackles up. His mind flickers back to that dream with those blurry shapes roaring around him and Rick striking out at him while at the same time egging him on, saying, _"Hit me. Hit me. Hit me."_ Morty's heart leaps into his throat at the same time that his hands are curling into fists—and he just _moves_ without thinking, spins around on his heel and jabs out with one fist.

He doesn't mean to do it, and luckily having a dream about fighting doesn't make you a good fighter, so it's not like his punch would have much effect—that doesn't change the fact though that he hits his dad in the arm, would have hit him in the face even had Dad not raised his arm in defense.

Cursing to himself and feeling completely rattled, Morty quickly pulls his earplugs out and backs up a step, trying to get his thudding heart back under control.

"Woah, kiddo, you alright?" Dad says, laughing the whole thing off like it's no big deal—but Morty feels like all the blood's draining out of him; he can't even believe he just did that.

 _'What the fuck—'_

"I just wanted to check up on you before I headed out," Dad adds, clearly prodding, and Morty mentally shakes himself off, struggles to come up some kind of reassuring thing to say. Behind him, the microwave beeps, reminding him of what he even came down here for.

"Dinner," he quickly blurts out. "I-I'm fine, just… getting some dinner."

Dad frowns at him, fiddling with his car keys. He starts to move back a few steps himself, like he's going to let it go, but then asks, "You sure? Your mom seemed kind of worried."

Morty flails his hands in the air, rapidly waving away the concern, saying, "N-no, no, no. It's fine. I-I-I'm fine." It doesn't sound at all convincing if the doubtful look on Dad's face is any indicator, so Mory does the only other thing he can really think of to do and… apologizes, "Sorry about, uh, hi-hitting you."

He really does feel bad about it, even if he hadn't hit him very hard.

Dad just chuckles though, pats at the spot on his arm where Morty had hit him much like how Dream Rick had slapped a hand against his neck.

"Hey, no harm done here," he says, and then he pauses to look over at the clock on the wall, sighs to himself and says, "Alright, I gotta head out."

Morty has never been completely sure if his dad actually likes his job. He knows the man's happy just being employed, but beyond that, his dad doesn't give off much. He'll talk about his day just like mom does, smiling when he mentions something funny that happened at work—but he's never outright said that he enjoys it, that he's happy at the factory—and as Dad steps past him to grab a bagged lunch out of the fridge, Morty can't help but notice the tired slump to the man's shoulders.

"Don't stay up too late!" Dad calls back as he leaves, heading out the door to the garage.

"Sure, um, g-goodnight," Morty says just as the door swings shut, and then the house is quiet one more. He slumps back against the counter, runs a stressful hand through his hair and mutters, "J-jeez."

Behind him, the microwave beeps again, reminding him of the meal he still needs to eat.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	20. Chapter 20

_(OMG, Sorry about the delay!)_

* * *

 **Chapter Twenty**

.

Sleep continues to be a fleeting, intermittent bitch even with the assistance of a second dose of Benadryl swallowed down at around 1AM. From the late hours of the night into the early hours of the morning, his body consistently wakes up with a twitch and a jitter—a shot of adrenaline racing through his veins—and that sore feeling in his joints gradually bleeds out to every nerve ending. He's aware of it all peripherally in a sleepy sort of way; can feel it in between each waking moment and every restless full-body shift. It makes it hard to find a position he actually feels comfortable in, and while Morty doesn't know much about the science behind sleep, he's pretty sure he never truly reaches that deep resting state for more than half an hour at a time, if even that.

His brain is starving and withering away on fragmented REM cycles, shriveling up into a dried husk inside his skull, and Morty is beginning to sense a pattern here. It might be a little early to start calling it flat-out _insomnia_ , but it doesn't take a genius to see that something's not right after two nights in a row of this bullshit—add in his itching to that and Morty feels like maybe he should start keeping a list of all his symptoms. Type it into a Google search, WebMD symptom checker that shit, and see what fun new affliction pops up for him now.

Depression or anxiety. Allergies. Anemia.

Mononucleosis. Diabetes.

Lyme disease—space Lyme disease?

Or maybe cancer. The big C. That somehow always shows up on the list no matter what set of symptoms you're typing in, looming over you as a possible outcome. It's the default worst-case scenario everyone goes to, thinking to themselves _I'm probably fine, but, y'know, **maybe** it's cancer. Just saying—_

It's 6:15AM when he's torn out of a light doze—the world's most shrilly irritating **_beep beep beep_** dragging claws through his brain and shredding up any remnants of sleep. All incoherent thought fragments into dust and floats away, and as Morty blinks his eyes open and shifts his limbs into the beginnings of a good stretch, pain greets him with a crushing bear hug.

 _'Are you there, Death? It's me, Morty.'_

He groans miserably like the air's been punched from his lungs, curling up on his side and hugging his pillow to his chest because the pressure might help in some way. It doesn't of course. The pain is too all-encompassing, like every muscle in his body has been strained and pulled—his nerve endings rubbed raw and bloody with a cheese grater—even that small act of grabbing his pillow sends a throbbing ache up his arms.

It seems that the soreness he'd been distantly aware of for the past several hours has reached its peak—his noodly weak body finally succumbing to the hard labor he'd put it through yesterday. Sprawled out on his side and trying not to move too much, Morty thinks about that anecdote of a frog slowly being boiled alive and not even realizing it—although if he's the frog in this scenario, fuck if he knows what the boiling pot is in his life. School maybe, or the Federation?

 _Fucking Christ,_ he hurts—every slight movement or shifting of his limbs revealing a new source of discomfort. It's a deep tissue kind of ache, from his skin to his muscles and down into his bones, almost like someone threw him down the stairs—and Morty suddenly has so many regrets about his physical fitness. It's a definite sign that he needs to work out more, should try and make a point to exercise, because this is fucking ridiculous.

Nearly eight months of monotonous living with little action and absolutely zero interdimensional adventures shouldn't mean that he can barely lift his arm to turn his damn cellphone alarm off. It's not like he ran a marathon yesterday, he just dug a fucking hole—and yeah, okay, it was a big hole, and the work wasn't exactly easy, but _still._

Dragging himself into a moderately upright position in bed is a herculean task. By the time he's freed himself from his covers and has his legs hanging over the side of his mattress, Morty feels weak and kind of fatigued and just about ready to give up on the day. He sways forward slightly on the bed, his head dipping down for a fraction of a second like he might just blackout, and he claps both hands over the edge of the mattress to steady himself, blinking rapidly and digging his fingers into the comforter.

There's a slight tremor running through him, up his legs and his arms and deep down into his chest, like his heart and lungs are fluttering around inside his ribcage. This is the kind of shit people go to the doctor for, and then later find out that they should have been going to the hospital—because guess what, buddy? That wasn't acid reflux you were feeling, that was a fucking heart attack.

But of course, Morty's himself is _fine._ No reason to get dramatic here over strained and pulled muscles.

His hand shakes as he reaches up to scratch at the side of his neck and down to the center of his chest. The itch is still there, but it feels fainter now—almost muted in comparison to all the aches. Morty hardly considers it an improvement though, replacing one shitty symptom for another. His body feels like a locked-up knotted mess, and if he were actually given a choice here, he thinks he might prefer the itching to the pain.

With stiff and strained movements and a long drawn-out groan, Morty pushes himself to his feet, determined to get up and get ready for the day. He starts by flexing his fingers down by his sides, stretching out tendons and listening to his joints pop, and then rolls his hands in a circle to loosen up his wrists. Stretching his arms high above his head next, he works out the kinks in his shoulders and neck and gradually moves down to the rest of his aching body; arching his back and bending and stretching each leg, flexing and straining to loosen up all his muscles and joints.

It hurts like a motherfucker, but Morty pushes through it—and honestly, he's not sure how much it actually helps. He knows nothing of exercise; never paid attention in gym back when the school still even had gym. Stretching at this point could be doing more harm than good, like maybe you're supposed to let your muscles relax and recover when your body feels this fucked up, throw a heating pad or ice pack on it or something—at the same time though, Morty's just so sore that stretching feels like the only real way to relieve the pain; pull his muscles taut long enough and for a fraction of a second, the pain starts to feel good.

He's still hurting by the time he stops, but at the very least, his movements are a bit looser, his arms and legs a bit easier to operate. He drifts through his morning routine of getting ready for school, pulling on his clothes with too-heavy limbs and groaning and gritting his teeth every time he moves wrong and shifts too quick. The pop tart he shoves down his throat for breakfast is tasteless, and Morty eats it standing at the kitchen counter with one hand shoved up his shirt and scratching at his side.

Mom's concerned gaze burns a hole into his back the entire time, but the only thing she says to him is a reminder to hurry up before he's late, followed by a lackluster " _Have a good day at school."_

Her eyes are dull when Morty looks at her, and the smile he gives her in return is empty—just programmed drones going through the motions. The ticking clock on their kitchen wall has never been louder.

On his way out the door that morning, Morty swallows down three Tylenol pills and stuffs the bottle into his backpack for later on in the day.

.

* * *

.

The school's lovely fluorescent lighting seems especially bright today, like the gas contained within those glass tubes is just seconds away from exploding in a blinding glorious blaze.

Random happenstance— _please—_ sear his eyes out of his sockets so that he may finally sleep again.

He's standing in shop and he only faintly remembers the past few hours of school, floating lightheaded from first to second session with his eyes pried wide open by the hooks of sleep deprivation. Whatever lecture or lesson he sat through, it all sloshes around inside his skull now as incomprehensible alphabet soup. Just a bunch of words and pictures that don't string together in any way that makes sense—and in the background, his mind echoes with the rattling sound of a pill bottle. It had followed him through the halls, from classroom to classroom and then down into shop, the ever-present sound of Tylenol shaking like a maraca in his backpack.

Midway into second session, when the body aches had gone from dull and manageable to something a bit harder to ignore, Morty had taken two more tablets; shook them out into his palm and tossed them back like a shot of liquor. It brought his tally up to five pills—five pills with each pill being 200 milligrams. Do the math and that's 1000 milligrams taken in almost a four-hour time period.

On the bus ride to school that morning, Morty had looked up information about Tylenol on his phone. He'd read the bottle of course, but the bottle said to only take one pill every hour (two pills if one's not enough) and to not exceed more than six pills in a day unless a doctor says otherwise. From prior experience with pain, he knows that going by those instructions isn't going to do shit for his body aches—if anything, Morty would prefer something _stronger_ than Tylenol—so he had turned to Google for a second opinion on what the medicine's true limits are.

Turns out that the maximum amount his body can safely handle is 3000 milligrams over a twenty-four-hour period. So that's ten more pills to last him for the day; spread it out well enough and he should be moderately pain free up until it's time for bed.

Of course, it's probably not a good idea to take that high of a dosage for more than a few days at a time. The website mentioned something about liver damage and that's not the kind of shit Morty wants to be messing with. He'll only really need it for two or three days though—just long enough to keep all the aches to a manageable level until his body recovers—so he's not really worried. He's seen Summer pop more pills than he can count when she'd having cramps, and she's always fine after the fact. This can't be that much different.

He swallows down one more pill before he puts his backpack away, just to be on the safe side for whatever back-breaking labor that lies ahead. All around him, the metallic clanging of shop lockers slamming shut sounds muffled and far away, like he's listening to it through a filter, and for a second Morty wonders if he's forgotten to take his earplugs out after lunch.

It wouldn't be the first time, and although he can very clearly feel them tucked away in his back pocket, he still checks to make sure they're not in. They're not— _obviously—_ but he kinda feels a little out of it, like he's running on autopilot, so he's not quite sure how much he should trust his perception on things right now. Even just trying to navigate through the bubbly cluster of all his classmates in the shop classroom is like trying to maneuver your way through a wavering mirage.

They're all going to Mars again today, and judging by how eager they sound about the whole thing, it wasn't the boring and unpleasant trip he'd hoped it to be. Morty presses his mouth into a tight line and brushes past them, just trying to escape to the greenhouse like he did yesterday.

He's so focused on ignoring their excited chatter that he almost doesn't hear his name being called—not just one person either, but several of his classmates saying ' _Hey—hey Morty. Morty, **hey!** '_

He flinches back just so slightly at the hand that tugs at his sleeve, the muscles in his back and the joints in his shoulders tensing up enough to ache again. His nerves are on a knife's edge—jumping jittery unstable—and Morty can only hope that it's not too obvious how much of a fucking wreck he is. The hand on his sleeve quickly draws away from him, so he thinks they might have noticed at least a little bit, but he still plasters a neutral look on his face when he turns around to face them.

It's Kaylee, Jenny, and Hanna—the three girls who shared stolen cake with him in the greenhouse—along a few other freshmen he's only really known in passing ever since everyone decided to keep their distance from him.

Morty's eyes dart between them, trying and failing to judge the situation, figure out what they want, because even though they all go to the same shop and in some cases the same sessions, rarely will any of them go out of their way to interact with him beyond what's necessary for their lessons. He's not saying that they completely ignore him or give him the silent treatment—they'll pass him the pruning shears and work side-by-side with him in the greenhouse, maybe exchange small talk—but that's about as far as any social contact with them goes.

Eating cake with the mean girl trio over a week back was the last time he had an actual real conversation with any of them. It's as professionally aloof as any high schooler can really be—and now here several of them are, standing there staring at him…smiling? Small smiles for sure, and Morty will admit it leaves him feeling hesitant, if not a little suspicious—though that could be sleep-deprived paranoia talking.

"Uhh—hi?"

He doesn't really know what else to say beyond that, so he half-raises his hand in the air to give a weak wave like some kind of fucking moron. Judging from the looks on his classmates faces, it's as awkward for them as it felt for him, and Morty's quick to let his hand flop back down to his side.

Mouth pressing into a tight line, his feet waver back a step all on their own. He almost turns around right then and there to flee to the greenhouse like he originally planned—social niceties be damned—except one of the girls breaks free from the small group and walks right up to him before he can.

She has both hands held behind her back, and Morty might have wondered on this further if he weren't so distracted with trying to remember if this is Kaylee or Hanna—because they both have blonde hair and he's just too fucking tired to match names to faces. Honestly, everyone's pretty much starting to blend together and look like everyone else at this point. Morty counts himself lucky that he can even remember any names at all.

"We brought something back for you," she says, both eyebrows raised pointedly, and she leans closer to add with a loud whisper, "Y'know, _from Mars._ "

Morty blinks at her slowly and unevenly, his mind not exactly comprehending the words coming out of her mouth. For a moment, he thinks that he may have heard her wrong, because why would they go to the trouble for him? Why would the thought to get something for him even cross their minds at all? They're his classmates, sure, but as far as his relationship with any of them goes, they're _acquaintances_ and not much else.

Of course, just as Morty's about to point this out to them—the not-so-eloquent words of ' _Why would you do that?'_ on the tip of his tongue—Kaylee/Hanna grabs him by the wrist and presses something jagged and gritty into his hand. She does it so swiftly, with her eyes doing a quick scan of the room to check for any unwanted onlookers, you'd almost think that she's sneaking him drugs and not—

"Y-you got me a rock."

"A rock from _Mars,_ " she says, putting extra emphasis on the whole 'other-planet' aspect of it.

Morty rubs the pad of his thumb over the rock, absentmindedly noting the rough texture. It fits neatly into the palm of his hand; rust-colored and coarse and about the size of a silver dollar. He stares down at it blankly as his brain flounders about in a puddle of stupid just trying to come up with some kind of coherent response—because it's actually a really nice gesture, something they didn't have to do at all, and saying ' _Um—thanks'_ somehow doesn't seem good enough.

So he blurts out the second thing that comes to mind.

"How did y-you get this past—errr… space customs?"

It's… not even close to the words he's searching for, but any internal filters he may have had before are all pretty much torn to shreds at this point. Lack of sleep loosens the lips it seems—probably just as effectively as getting shit-faced on alcohol. In fact, Morty's pretty sure he read somewhere that being sleep deprived is pretty much the same as being drunk, what with the way it fucks with your body and your cognition and everything.

He really doesn't feel like he's that bad off though. He's tired, but—y'know, he's seen what being drunk is like more times than he can count and… yeah, he's fine. He's not nearly close to being in any kind of state like that.

"Space customs?" Kaylee/Hanna echoes, looking amused by the term. "Morty, we're just the dumb kids from stupid school, not exactly a high security risk. They pretty much just fly us in in what's the space equivalent of the back of a pickup truck." She laughs at the thought of it, a few of the other kids standing behind her chuckling too, and then she sidles up next to Morty and quietly tells him, "I mean, they have cameras everywhere, sure, but it's not like they pat us down. So just a little sleight of hand and— _voilà_ — we got you a rock."

Proving her point, she plucks it out of his hand with a move so quick that it takes him a second to even realize that it's gone. He blinks down at his empty hand, his fingers closing shut around air as his eyes dart up to see Kaylee/Hanna holding the rock delicately between two fingers. The thought that she would make a good pick-pocket briefly passes his mind—of course, his slowed reflexes probably made it ridiculously easy for her.

"S-sso you just walked it right by them?" he asks, just a bit doubtful.

"I hid it in my bra," she says with a shrug, simple and dismissive, and Morty fumbles to take the rock when she passes it back to him. He nearly drops it on the floor when Kaylee/Hanna claps him on the shoulder hard enough to shift his whole body forward a step.

"Don't make it a big deal," she says.

"Uhh—r-right," Morty struggles to find words, _any_ words. He closes his fingers around the rock, holding it in a tight fist and forcing his brain to slog through a muck of scattered thoughts—some of which are both hormonal _and_ inappropriate, and he does his best to ignore them completely. It only _kinda_ works.

Morty clears his throat, looks up at them all with a small but genuine smile and says, "Thanks." He holds up the rock, makes a brief gesture in the air with it and continues, "Rr-really. Iii-it's a cool souvenir."

"Sure, man," one of the boys in the group says with an easy-going shrug. "Just doesn't seem fair that you can't go with us."

The boy— _Jack_ or something along those lines—he sounds so sincere when he says this that Morty can't help but feel a little spark of guilt flare up inside his chest. Here his classmates are, not _just_ thinking about how he can't go on the trip too, but actually going out of their way to risk sneaking something back to Earth for him—and all Morty could think about yesterday was how he hoped they all had a miserable time.

Maybe being an all-around asshole is genetic—right up there with alcoholism and addiction.

Morty fiddles shakily with the rock; the slight tremor he'd felt this morning seeming to have returned to his hands. He's thankfully saved from having to say anything further when their horticulture instructors call for everyone's attention at the back of the classroom by the doors. It would seem that the ten minutes they always give them at the start of the session are up, and it's time for everyone to get going—his classmates to the shuttle headed for Mars, and Morty to the greenhouse to finish digging that hole.

Tucking the small rock into his front pants pocket, he slips away to the greenhouse before anyone can notice him leave.

.

* * *

 _TBC_


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

 **.**

Maybe it's—y'know—the exhaustion, but when Morty walks into the greenhouse and sees that one of the earlier sessions had apparently finished digging the hole, he very nearly bursts into tears. The emotions just seem to come out of fucking nowhere; a fluctuating strobe light of hysterical joy blended together with an overpowering sense of melancholy. It pricks at his eyes and twists up a ticklish knot somewhere deep inside his chest that makes him itch, and Morty can't quite stop the fit of laughter that bubbles out of his throat—brittle and high-pitched in those first few exhales of breath, then dragging down into something more ragged and manic that tears free from his lungs in explosive ha- _ha-HAs_.

It's the frenetic music of a faltering mind, the opening chords of his mental breakdown. _Do-Re-Mi—ha-_ _ **ha-HA!**_ His shoulders shake as it ripples through him, and Morty's fingers find their way into his hair, twisting up into brown locks and gripping tight like that alone will keep him grounded, keep him stable.

He gasps, breathless under the wash of conflicting chemicals his brain's pumping out in a flailing panic, and it's in that moment that Morty realizes just how much he's been dreading this task—that despite his petulant grumbling and detached denial about it just being a hole he was digging, the thought of having to force his failing body through another two hours of hard manual labor had left him _more_ than a little frayed at the edges.

Stumbling forward on unsteady legs, Morty stands at the edge of the hole. Three-feet-deep and eight-by-eight-feet all around with concrete blocks set inside, lining the outer edges to create some sort of shelf— _concrete blocks that he would have had to lift and carry and set into place_ —and suddenly Morty needs to sit down, because _jesus,_ he feels lightheaded. Disconnected. Like he could just float up to the greenhouse rafters and slip through the vents.

Delirious euphoria packs a hell of a punch.

Letting out a shuddering breath, Morty wavers on his feet and then sinks to the ground, perching himself right at the edge of the hole with his legs hanging down over the side and his shoes pressed against the concrete blocks. Absentmindedly, he rubs at stinging eyes, wiping away the remnants of mirthful, overwhelmed tears. It's pathetic that he's this happy over something so small and unimportant. At the same time though, he can't help but look down at all the work done and think about how he's never seen a more beautiful hole in the ground in his life—like seriously, whoever finished digging this hole did a fucking amazing job and Morty could not be more grateful.

Of course, that's not to say that the work is completely done for him today. While he might not be doing anymore digging, this water garden is far from finished. The pile of large flat rocks and the massive roll of some kind of black rubber lining sitting next to the hole is proof of that enough.

' _Still though,'_ he thinks vehemently, ' _not a single fucking shovel in sight.'_

A much smaller, more controlled chuckle escapes him, thoughts of ' _How has my life come down to this?'_ briefly flickering through his head.

The distant sound of ship engines catches his attention soon after, and Morty leans back, his palms braced against the walkway behind him. He turns his gaze skyward, watching as the shuttles containing his classmates jet off to various off-world destinations for the second day in a row now.

' _Leaving me behind again.'_

And yet the thought doesn't bother him as much today, not after he slips one hand into his pocket and curls his fingers around the Mars rock.

Altaynx comes weaving into the greenhouse about five minutes later to find him, her clawed legs a fluid tattoo of clicks against the walkway, and Morty bolts to his feet in a clumsy scramble. It's the last session of the day before he can finally go home and take a _thirty-hour nap_ , and he doesn't want to start it off with Altaynx thinking he's already slacking.

As Morty is quick to find out though, standing up that fast when you're feeling this shitty is a surefire way to send all the blood rushing from your head. He has to dart one hand out and grab onto the nearest plant bench just to keep from face-planting onto the greenhouse floor—because the human body and all its failings is just the gift that keeps on giving.

' _Yaaaaaay…'_ he thinks in a lackluster drawl, blinking rapidly to clear the black spots from his vision. They dance in such a dandy way, tiny little inkblots swooping and swaying and morphing from one Rorschach test to another.

Or maybe Morty's the one who's swaying, what with the way his body starts to tilt forward—like the greenhouse floor has suddenly angled down a few awkward degrees and his shaking arm is having a little trouble holding up his full body weight. His grip tightens around the plant bench, the steel edge biting into his palm, and he shuts his eyes tight and flattens his free hand against his forehead with a groan.

Far in front of him, the clicking sound of claws against concrete grows more rapid. Altaynx makes the strangest crackling-whirr noise as she crosses the greenhouse—a sound so foreign that not even her translator can seem to decipher it—and before Morty can fully process the faint shadow that sweeps over his closed eyes, there are claws hooking onto his shirt and pulling him upright.

He startles at the contact, both arms flailing out around himself and his eyes snapping wide open. His hands collide with Altaynx's limbs in a fight or flight reflex, but they're weak kitten swats against the strength of her exoskeleton and she holds him steady with little difficulty. Her claws move with a kind of swift precision as they fan out over him, tugging at his shirt and his arms to better support the increasing deadweight of his flagging body.

She walks him over to a nearby potted plant—one that's massive in size with long, twisted fronds—and sets him down forcefully against the pot's curved side. The breath punches out of him in a quiet _oomph_ when his ass hits the ground, and despite all the painkillers he's been taking, the body aches bleed back into his joints and his muscles and it leaves him wanting to curl up into a ball on his side and wait for school to be over—not even because of the ache, which isn't really all that bad, but more because he is just so fucking _done_ with this day and everything it involves.

But that would be unnecessarily dramatic, and Altaynx seems worked up enough as it is—so in the end, Morty simply settles for slouching against the large pot and going mostly limp. On a positive note though, the glazed ceramic is pleasantly cool against his back, and Morty finds a small degree of comfort in pressing his hands back against it.

Arched over him like a cobra, Altaynx points her antennae down at him and clicks her mandibles in that guttural crackling noise that her translation device only picks up every other word of. It all sounds like nonsense to him. Morty blinks blearily up at her, his head resting sideways against one shoulder.

It's a little hard to tell if her rough treatment had been intentional, like maybe she's pissed off at him or something. Raspy bug screeching doesn't have much emotional inflection to it, at least nothing that humans can pick up on, and their facial expressions don't give much away either. At the same time though, Morty's noticed that larger insectoid species tend to underestimate their strength when it comes to soft, fleshy humans like himself—so really, her mood could be going either way here.

Keeping his own face on the neutral side, Morty goes for the innocuous platitude of _"I'm fine"_ to settle his instructor's ongoing tirade on… whatever. It's enough to give her pause—a short breath of silence that allows her translation device time to reset and recalibrate.

"'Fine?'" she finally echoes in a sharp grunt of mechanically filtered English. "In my species, offspring who are 'fine' like you get _eaten_ by stronger, more healthy siblings in spawning clutch. Keeps genetic lines stable."

"Y-yeah," Morty says on an exhaled breath, not really fazed by the comment given all the shit he's seen. He shrugs, "Sibling rivalry is rough for humans too."

Altaynx doesn't look amused—but again, Morty would have a hard time telling if she was even on a good day. The gritty grumbling noise she makes does sound pretty annoyed though, and Morty has to press his lips together tightly to hold back a smile. He'll admit that it's kinda fun messing with her—with any Federation official really—especially when it comes their preconceived notions about humans. The lack of sleep just makes it seem even more funny than it is.

Her staring is a little unnerving though, and she does it for an uncomfortable twenty-seconds before Morty sputters out another assurance of, "R-really. I'm fine."

She doesn't look convinced, but also doesn't seem to care enough to press the issue. Instead, she flattens her antennae back against her head and straightens upright.

"If you are fine, then you will work," she says, and her body twists away from him as she clicks her way back over to the hole in the ground. She's muttering quietly to herself as she goes, but her translation device only manages to pick up enough of what she's saying to filter out the words ' _healthy children work for benefit of Federation,'_ and other fragments of bullshit propaganda they've been spoon-feeding humans for over half a year now.

Sighing, Morty decides not to even bother getting back to his feet to follow after her, and instead he just sort of shuffles along the walkway on his hands and knees until he reaches the hole—because he's reached a point in his exhaustion where he has no fucking shame. Setting his ass down right next to the hole and about a foot away from Altaynx's large looming form, he leans back on his palms and looks up at her for direction, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

Clicking her mandibles decisively, she wastes no more time in starting the lesson. As expected, it's more manual labor on his part, though not as difficult as all the digging had been yesterday—and unlike yesterday's session, for some strange reason, Altaynx sticks around in the greenhouse with him instead of leaving him to do all the work. It's possible that she just doesn't trust him to do the job correctly, but Morty's certainly not complaining— _especially_ when she does some of the work for him.

With her long body curving down the walkway behind her and her front half arched above the hole, her limbs move in an even and methodical pace as she shows him what to do and directs him where to go. They lay out the black rubber sheeting first, the two of them unrolling it all and pressing it down into place. She instructs him on how to fold the corners here and there until the entirety of the dirt pit has been lined with it, making sure the water they'll fill it up with won't be going anywhere.

Things get a little wet after that. While Altaynx is busy unwinding the hose and carrying it over from the other end of the greenhouse, Morty takes off his shoes and socks and rolls his pant-legs up past his knees. Someone needs to adjust the liner as the pond is filled up with water, and out of the two of them, he's the better one to do it considering that his limbs don't end in a sharp point—or at least that's what Altaynx tells him. Morty can see her reasoning, but part of him thinks that she just doesn't want to get wet.

As Altaynx points out what spots need fixing, Morty shuffles around the pond with his arms stretched out for balance and his bare feet pressing into the liner here and there to straighten it out. Cold water sloshes around his legs with each step, rising up past his ankles to his shins and when it reaches his knees, he steps up onto the shelf the concrete blocks made around the outer edge and presses that all into place too.

When the water level reaches a little bit past two feet, Altaynx goes to turn the hose off and Morty climbs out of the pond to let his legs dry out. She tells him that they'll fill it up the rest of the way later, after they've finished everything else, and from there, she shows him how to lay the flat rocks out to create a stone edge around the pond. There's a lot of excess rubber lining extending over the lip of the pond, so you take that and fold it under and back over one rock, then place another rock on top of that to hold it in place, and repeat until you've gone all the way around.

It's a bit like assembling a puzzle, trying to find the right rock that will fit on top of the others and leave very little wiggle room after—which sometimes means you'll have to wedge smaller rocks in between all of the gaps and creases. The end goal is that it needs to be stable enough to lean onto with one hand or a knee, that way there's not as much risk of someone toppling in when they have to reach into the pond for any reason.

It's also just as much of a bitch to do as digging the hole had been. A lot of the rocks are big and heavy and before they're even halfway done, the muscles in Morty's arms and upper body are practically screaming.

"So wh-who even finished digging this?" he huffs, leaning heavily against the rock he just set down, his arms shaking. "Not that I'm complaining, I-I just thought I was the only one gr-ground— _banned_ from trips."

On the other end of the pond from him, Altaynx sets down two large rocks like it's no trouble at all for her. She fiddles with their placement and positioning obsessively, and makes a noncommittal crackling noise as she says, "Is two older children. One convict child like you—other is… _stupid loyal_ companion."

"Ohhh-kay…" Morty says after a pause, blinking slowly down at his own rock as he shifts its placement until it's more secure.

He doesn't really absorb the words at first. Chalk it up to his increasing exhaustion and having to put whatever remaining strength he has left into moving these damn rocks around, but it takes him a good ten minutes before his brain actually makes the connection. 'Two older children' being _two seniors,_ and if one is a 'convict child' like him—well, they did say at the assembly that anyone caught protesting would have their fieldtrip privileges revoked. It wouldn't surprise Morty if there had been protestors arrested that night at the Tourist Control Center—that senior worried about singing being one of them—which would make the 'stupid loyal companion' his friend who had been doing the more dangerous job. The same kind of job Summer had been doing.

Pressing half of his weight against the section of rocks he'd been working on, Morty deems it stable enough and drags himself back to his feet to go get more for the next section.

' _If they're here by themselves for all of first session, I could sneak down here to talk to them. Try and get some information.'_

Of course, he'd be running the risk of Altaynx catching him. That would also mean waiting until tomorrow morning—and tonight could be the night Summer decides she's healed up enough and slips out to go see her psycho cult group.

Glaring down at the pile of rocks, Morty hefts a stack of three up against his stomach and carries them the short distance over to the pond. The loud _crack_ they make echoes though the greenhouse when he practically drops them down by his work area. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Altaynx snap her head up in his direction in clear disapproval. She doesn't say anything though, so Morty ignores her—just sinks down to his knees and gets to work on the next section.

He's been stagnant for nearly three days now, so distracted by everything going on around him and by his own exhaustion that he's been doing absolutely fucking nothing to get answers. Christ, he's barely even been keeping an eye out in the halls for the two seniors. For how effective he's been, he might as well have been sleepwalking these past few days. _He needs to actually act_ —needs to make a move here, because his sister had been fucking mauled and he wants to know more about whatever the hell she's diving back into before it happens.

As much as he hates the idea of waiting until tomorrow though, he's not seeing a better plan here. Whether it was the two seniors who dug the hole or not, if they are actually in school right now, they'd been in their own third session, and all seniors have Federation Education for their third session. That pretty much closes the book on any possibility of getting to them there. There's no way he'd be able to sneak past whatever Federation instructor is teaching their class, and considering that he doesn't even know their names, there's not too much he'd be able to do to get them to leave class early.

Compared to all of those obstacles, getting past Altaynx without her noticing would be a lot easier, and maybe by the time tomorrow rolls around, he'll have a plan on how to do that—none of this last-minute, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants bullshit.

' _I could try and catch them at the end of class,'_ he thinks.

But that wouldn't really work either, would it? Federation Education classrooms are two floors up and all the way on the other side of the building. Even if Morty ran as soon as the bell rang, he still wouldn't be able to catch them before they left—and on the rare chance that he intercepts them along the way, what the hell could he even do then? Have this big secret conversation in the middle of a busy hallway where any other student or instructor could hear them?

Yeah, _great_ plan, and as an added bonus, he'd miss his bus ride home too. Summer would be thrilled—being the only one available to come get him since Mom would still be at work and Dad would be in a medicated coma.

' _So… tomorrow then…'_

Morty huffs out a frustrated sigh, rearranging the next set of rocks he'd just put down. His palms feel rough and his fingertips scraped, and every new stack of rocks he picks up from the pile seems heavier than the last. By the time they finish the damn thing, third session is over halfway done, the timer at the head of the greenhouse counting down from thirty-three minutes.

The pond looks fucking awesome though; a nice big in-ground water display that fits so perfectly with the rest of the greenhouse. Morty can't stop look at it for some reason, that sense of accomplishment feeling like a warm glowing ball in his chest despite how sore and tired he is.

He doesn't even notice Altaynx leaving until he sees that the water level is rising and the hose has been turned back on to fill up the pond the rest of the way. The sound of her clicking legs fades into the distance as she leaves the greenhouse entirely, and Morty takes this opportunity to find a clean, dry spot on the walkway where he can still see the pond.

At first he just sits there, then gradually he sinks down until he actually is curled up into a ball on his side, his head pillowed on one arm. It's not at all comfortable—the ground is too hard and one of the nearby plant species keeps reaching out to brush against his neck and thread curiously through his hair—but fuck it all, he is too worn out to be bothered, and he is very adamant about the fact that he will not be moving from this spot for at least ten minutes.

Clicking claw-steps return soon after and Altaynx's shadow falls over him. The large insectoid looms over him, staring down, and Morty's only half-sure that she's joking when she says, "Not dead, hopefully?"

He tilts his head sideways, looking up at her with a wry smile, "No, not yet."

She trills contemplatively, her front limbs fiddling with something, and that's when he notices the large plastic container clutched carefully between her claws. It's filled with some kind of dull green powder, and as she twists away from him and clicks over to the pond, she says, "Sit up. You will be wanting to see."

Curious despite his earlier assertion that he wouldn't be getting up or moving anytime soon, Morty sits up and shuffles closer to the pond on his knees, watching the way she shakes the plastic container and then flips the top open.

"W-what is that stuff?" he asks, sitting down next to the pond's stone edging, but also making sure to keep several feet of distance between him and whatever that green powder is that she's holding.

"Water is different between planets," she explains, leaning over the pond. "This is treatment for that—lets extraterrestrial plants survive. Is _fun part._ "

When she upends the entire container-full of powder into the pond, it's like dropping in a bath bomb. Immediately, the water starts to bubble and froth as a cloud of murky green billows outwards. It honestly kind of looks like a chemical spill—not at all the sort of thing you'd expect _any_ plant to do well in—but Morty's seen enough of the universe to know that there are zero rules when it comes to nature.

By the time the water settles and the powder dissolves completely, the pond has taken on a dirty green hue and there's an oil-slick shimmer coating its surface—water conditions that only an alien plant could love.

And of course the very first thing Morty does is reach his hand out and dip two fingers into the pond, because he clearly has no sense of self-preservation—much like when he was four and had stuck his finger into the open socket of a nightlight to see if it would glow.

Luckily, his skin doesn't immediately melt off, or even start burning or itching. The water feels a little sticky and his fingers come back green, but otherwise it seems just like normal water.

Then Altaynx makes a grinding crackle noise above him that translates to, "Be sure you wash hands after. Best not to let sit."

' _Awesome,'_ he thinks with a grimace, wiping his fingers off on his shirt.

.

* * *

.

Socks and shoes on, his pant-legs rolled back down, and hands thoroughly scrubbed—Morty's all put back together by the time the final bell of the school day rings. He does end up keeping an eye out for those two seniors, just in case some kind of opportunity presents itself so that he doesn't have to wait until tomorrow, but the hallways end up being too crowded for him to have any luck spotting them. Freshmen and sophomores have all returned from their trips and are racing to their lockers to grab their things before they go, and juniors and seniors are trickling out of the classrooms at a more leisurely pace. It's like a _Where's Waldo?_ game that he has no patience or energy to play.

Deciding to cut his losses and call it a day, Morty makes a quick stop at the closest water fountain to swallow down two more Tylenol tablets—just enough to keep his piece-of-shit body going until he gets home.

The call of _"Morty, hey!"_ comes just as he's stuffing the pill bottle back into his backpack. He very nearly ignores it until he catches a flash of red hair out of the corner of his eye.

It's Jessica. He hasn't seen her since the assembly or even _talked_ to her since that time on the loading docks however many weeks back—and now here she is, making her way quickly down the hall to him, smiling and waving. Morty half-raises his own hand in the air to give a confused wave back, a part of him questioning if this is even happening at all.

"We're all going to the library to work on our research projects," she says when she reaches him, and that's when Morty notices the other people standing behind her—what looks to be a mix of other freshmen and a few sophomores. None of them are people that he knows.

"There's not much in the school's library that's actually useful," Jessica says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and drawing Morty's attention back to her. "At least for this project, I mean. Most of it is just Earth books."

That… kind of figures, doesn't it?

"Our instructor said we could find information at any Federation library though, and their new big _Intergalactic Library_ just opened up over in Seattle," she tells him, smiling. "We're all gonna take the bus over. Do you want to come?"

Depending on traffic, Seattle really isn't that far of a drive. Dad actually commutes there every day for his factory job. Plus, students get a major discount for public transportation. He knows this all intellectually, and he also knows that he needs to actually work on his project. The deadline is coming up soon and so far he hasn't done shit on it.

At the same time though, the thought of doing anything more than going home and collapsing into bed kind of makes Morty want to step _in front of_ the bus rather than ride it. If his body could talk right now, it'd be saying: _fuck no, please, god—_

The battle has already been lost though—not even due to that nagging sense of responsibility telling him to just _do it_ and get it over with—but because it's _Jessica_ inviting him along. He may not feel this giant mind-numbing crush on her anymore and his life and everything going on around him is still way too fucked to even focus on something like that, but… Jessica's always been nice to him. He still likes her—would still like hanging out with her. There's not too many people in his life he say that about.

"Yeah, s-sure."

.

* * *

 _TBC_

 _Just to reiterate, there won't be any romance or any pairings in this story (save for references to past relationships), mostly because I really don't feel like writing romance. Morty wouldn't be Morty though if he didn't have some kind of warm regard for Jessica (and occasional hormonal teenage-boy thoughts), but yeah-no romance, no dating, no main characters getting together with other characters. The most there will be is Beth and Jerry attempting to make their marriage work._

 _Final note: If internet articles are to be believed (which is to say that this is still all just speculation), in about two months or so, Season 3 will premiere and this story will officially be a **Canon-Divergence** fic. There's still so much of the story to go, and there's no way I'd be able to finish it in two months time. I **will** still be writing it though, I just hope that you'll all still be interested!_


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

.

The delayed thought drifts through his mind about twenty minutes into the trip, this sleepy realization that he should probably contact his family to let them know where he is and that he won't be home until later, otherwise they might start thinking he's been kidnapped or apprehended by the Federation or something. Morty's hands don't seem to want to cooperate with him though—too clumsy and uncoordinated by the tremors running through him to have much success in typing out a message that's actually coherent. If it weren't so fucking noisy on the bus, he'd just use the _voice-to-text_ feature on his phone, but as it is, he's left with fumbling fingers and poking forcefully at the screen with an irritated frown.

It takes him three tries to type it all out in a way that makes _some_ sense, and even then, it reads like a drunk text—a disjointed mess of ' _Im find. Goibgto librry w: skul griends. B bak ltr 2nite,'_ followed by a random shoe emoji that somehow sneaks its way in there right as he's pressing _Send._ It's not exactly what he'd call reassuring—if anything, he probably would've been better off not sending a text at all—but Morty's just too tired to worry about it either way, and since nobody tries to immediately call him back in a panic that there's something wrong, he figures it's good enough.

Slipping his cellphone into his coat pocket, he leans back in his seat and tucks shaky hands beneath his thighs to pin them down, mostly to stop himself from scratching like a dog with fleas.

The bus ride to Seattle will be around a forty-five-minute drive overall. Morty finds himself drifting off for a few fragmented minutes several different times throughout it, the motion of being driven around a soothing siren's song he's just too weak to resist. It seems like every time he starts to slip under though—his head bobbing forward and his vision going fuzzy—the bus hits a pothole or shifts lanes too suddenly and Morty's snapped back awake with a shot of startled adrenaline. It makes his head buzz like a fucking livewire jolting through his brain, and for a fraction of a second, his thoughts are a disoriented mess of _where am I? What time—what **day** is it? I'm **late** , I—am I late for something?_

And then— _Right, right. The library, I'm… going to the library._

Inhale and exhale—just keep it together for another few hours. He'll be done with this stupid report and be back at home before he knows it. Maybe then he'll finally be able to get some goddamn _sleep._

Jessica's slouched down in the seat across from him with her legs stretched out into the aisle and crossed at the ankles. Her friends are scattered in the seats around them, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Over the ambient roar of the bus, Morty can faintly hear them talking about all the _fun and interesting things_ they did on their fieldtrips today—so much so that he's just about ready to stick his earplugs in and wait until they reach their stop.

None of her friends seem to be all that interested in talking to him anyway—or even introducing themselves for that matter, as Morty still doesn't know any of their names. It was pretty obvious from the start that they're only tolerating him because Jessica invited him—a perfect example of that being the pinched look they get every time they glance his way, like they've just bitten into something nasty. Morty can't be sure if it's for the same reason everyone else at school avoids him for, or if it's something they have against him personally.

He honestly can't find it in himself to care either way. Apparently the one benefit to being this sleep deprived is that you reach this point of not giving a fuck— _where your problems are made up and manners don't matter—_ and while some people might think that's a bad thing, Morty's not seeing the downside so far.

Deciding that he'll just ignore her friends in turn—because fuck each and every one of them—Morty slouches down in his seat to get more comfortable and digs his earplugs out of his pocket anyway. The only reason he agreed to this trip is because it was Jessica who asked him, and right now Jessica's attention is focused exclusively on her cellphone, so there's not much reason for Morty to _not_ be wearing the earplugs.

 _'Nothing worth listening to, at least.'_

Trusting that Jessica will wake him up when they reach their stop, Morty lets himself drift off for what's probably the tenth time now, hoping that this time he'll actually stay under for longer than a few minutes. In-between sleepy head-bobs though, Morty swears he sees Jessica's eyes dart up in his direction, a furrowed look of concentration on her face and this flicker of _something_ in her blue eyes. He's out before he can analyze it as anything more than an overtired delusion, but whether it's real or not, it's enough to make him feel irrationally paranoid as he slips into sleep—like maybe he should have declined her invite to the library after all.

And for some reason that leads into strange, abstract dreams. They slip through his fingers in viscous strings, too quick to fully comprehend them— _he's somewhere dark, on his knees with his hands submerged in a box—_ sounds too muffled and colors too blurry— _bright florescent lighting, he's gliding, coasting—_ one image melting and smearing into one after another—

 _Fists colliding with flesh—_

 _S_ _hades of purple in the dark—_

 _H_ _is hands write glowing letters into an abyss—_

It's all meaningless to him, completely nonsensical, and yet at the same time Morty's struck with this sense of danger—an evacuation siren going off in his head, but he has no idea what he's being warned of—and then quite abruptly, he's overcome with that unsettling feeling you get when someone's standing over you… looming… watching _…_

Tired, bloodshot eyes snap open wide as Morty jolts upright in his seat, sucking in a startled breath of air. His body moves instinctively, both elbows slamming into the back of his seat as his arms flail out like he's trying to brace himself. He would have lunged to his feet too were it not for the quick hand that claps down on his shoulder to keep him in place. It's enough to raise his proverbial hackles in a snarling defense—his muscles tensing up under the touch because _who the fuck even_ —and he's about two seconds away from lashing out when his eyes finally focus enough to register the purple skirt and blouse on his so-called attacker.

Jessica. Of course.

She's standing there all casual, leaning over him with her red hair hanging down in her face and her left hand pressing down on Morty's shoulder while her right taps away at her cellphone. For some strange reason, she'd given up her seat and moved across the aisle to stand _directly in front of him_ —her legs pressed up against his shins and the hem of her skirt brushing at his knees in a way that fries whatever fragments of intelligence he may have had left. Add on to that the fact that from the way she's leaning, he can pretty much see down her shirt, and all thought of baffled confusion decays into an inappropriate slurry of teenage hormones

Christ. He does not have the mental capacity to process this right now.

Morty quickly snaps his gaze up to her face, pushing unhelpful blaring announcements about _grey and pink sports bras_ from his mind and hoping that his eyes aren't bugging out of his head in a way that's too obvious. She's not even really looking at him though, so he's probably safe there. Her attention seems to still be too focused on the cellphone she's holding in her other hand to notice any social faux-pas on his part.

Swallowing thickly, Morty pulls his earplugs out with fumbling hands and somehow manages to string together enough braincells to utter the word, "W-what—"

" _Shhhh,_ " she hisses, cutting him off, and before he has a chance to speak further, she turns her cellphone towards him, showing him a message typed out on the screen.

 **~ Feds on ur right**

Morty frowns at the message, not really getting it at first. His brain is moving at frankly stupid rates, like he hasn't completely broken away from sleep, and it takes him longer than he'd like to admit for him to actually parse out the words in a way that makes sense. Once it does click though, he has to stop himself from twisting around in his seat in the most obvious ' _don't-look-now'_ way possible—because they see Federation all the time, so what's the big deal about now? Sneaking a discrete look to the side though, Morty understands her unease immediately.

Standing up at the front of the bus by the doors are two hulking Federation enforcers decked out in full tactical gear. While the sight of regular officers and security guards of the Galactic Federation have become a pretty common occurrence down on Earth, enforcers just aren't something you see very often. From what Morty's both witnessed and heard, they're the Federation's version of a soldier and the first ones out on the front lines in the event of a riot or worse.

Between their black body armor scratched up from past battles, the red visors of their helmets masking their faces, and the rather intimidating-looking guns they keep strapped to their backs, the presence of enforces isn't something to be taken lightly—and these two insectoids aren't any different. Morty just about has a flashback to a certain wedding he doesn't like to think about, something in his chest twisting up tight at the phantom sound of insect wings beating rapidly in the air, distant but growing louder like descending military helicopters.

Jessica's hand slips away from his shoulder as she straightens back upright, bringing Morty back down to reality. She doesn't move back to her seat though, just stays where she's standing and reaches up to hold onto the handrail above her.

With a sharp exhale, Morty forces himself to look away from the two bugs—focus on the here and now and not what happened in the past—because this isn't a raid and the two bugs aren't storming in with guns blazing. They're just paying their bus fare like any other normal passenger. It'd almost be funny if they themselves weren't so freaking terrifying.

That's when it hits him just how quiet it is on the bus. The unintelligible murmur of human voices from before has fallen completely silent. Looking around, he sees gazes dropped down and cellphones being held like shields. Some stare off blankly into the middle-distance while others hold themselves like coiled springs. It's the body language of a species closed off, wary and waiting for the next blow to come—with shoulders hunched up and tense, bags and briefcases and purses all held closer to the body, and arms crossed over chests.

It's all so damn unsettling that Morty can't help but feel nervous, that unexplainable sense of danger from before sweeping over him and making his palms sweat, like he actually has something to be worried about. His eyes automatically dart back over to the two Federation bugs as if he's expecting them to be staring him down like some kind of criminal, which makes zero fucking sense because he hasn't even done anything. Not recently at least, and nothing that the Federation knows of.

Logic doesn't seem to factor in though when your brain is misfiring and malfunctioning like an oversensitive smoke-detector. The bugs haven't even looked his way yet—but then they're turning, starting to make their way down the aisle, and Morty feels locked-in and completely exposed. He's Bambi's fucking mom standing out in a wide-open field and that ominous music has started playing, building up into its crescendo the closer they get.

 _Run. Run. Don't look back—_

A purple blouse moves into his line-of-sight—Jessica, blocking his view of the two enforces—and before Morty even has a chance to blink, she shoves her phone into his face. There's a short video playing on the screen of some guy freaking out over a bear falling into a river, followed by a funny cat video and a series of videos of dogs barking in slow-motion. It completely derails his train of thought, his anxiety stunned silent.

When the two enforcers walk by, it doesn't escape Morty's notice that not only is Jessica blocking his view of them, she's also blocking their view of him.

If the bugs did see him at all, they certainly don't give off any sign that they noticed him, and they move to take their seats at the back of the bus without incident. It's hard to judge their mood because their translators are switched off. Translators may be standard issue for any agent of the Federation visiting Earth, but unless they're speaking to people directly, they don't tend to keep them turned on. The only sound that Morty or any other human on the bus can pick up on is guttural screeching, but the two insectoids seem pretty settled in their seats, so people start to relax a bit.

The bus doors squeak as they slam shut, a pressurized hiss shaking the floor beneath his feet.

' _Exhaust break system_ ,' Morty's mind supplies, completely inexplicably because he has no fucking idea how he knows that. He watches the next cat video with a furrowed brow and a few confused blinks.

' _Air compressors pump air into storage tanks to be used in_ —'

Morty scrunches his nose up, shaking his head to clear the involuntary thoughts away and letting the loud rumble from the bus engine drown it all out. He looks up from the cellphone screen, meets Jessica's eyes and offers her a brittle smile.

"Thanks."

She smiles back at him and says with a small shrug, "Yeah, of course."

As the bus lumbers back out into traffic and starts to pick up speed, Morty offers Jessica his seat since she gave up her own to come stand in front of him and act as an impromptu shield. Jessica shakes her though and politely declines. She sticks to her spot standing in front of him, swaying with the subtle movements of the bus, and although she does turn her attention back to her phone, every now and then, she'll pause to show him a new funny video. She doesn't even question him when he asks her not to play anything with music.

A few quiet conversations start up around them once the bus is back on its main route, but for the most part, nobody talks. Nobody human at least. The two Federation enforcers keep up a rather loud and expressive conversation in the back, and some alien tourists board the bus at the next few stops and fill up the lingering silence with their various off-world languages. When they finally do reach their stop and step off the bus, it's like all of Morty's classmates breathe a collective sigh of relief, the tension in their bodies slipping away as if it had never been there in the first place.

And not a single one of his classmates brings up what happened on the bus. It's a reaction that's a complete one-eighty from all the snarky and cynical whispering he hears so much at school. For the remaining short walk to the library, Morty's left trailing an uncertain step behind the group, feeling baffled by how they brush the whole thing off, pretending like there's no reason to be bothered by this being the new normal.

' _'There is no war in Ba Sing Se,''_ he thinks, and once again has to hold back the incredulous laughter that threatens to spill out.

It's assimilation done with care—a gentle takeover, so relax please—because struggling only makes it worse, right? Just be meek and silent in the face of the Federation and you have nothing to worry about. Fold your hands neatly in your lap and bare your neck with a smile. No big deal—you're just being a _model citizen._

' _Fuck me.'_

And then that bubble of laughter building inside his chest abruptly pops when they turn down the street and Morty sets eyes on the bold, blocky text marking the Federation's _Intergalactic Public Library._ While the large black and green letters stretching across one side of the building are new, the building itself is one that Morty's seen a few times before during previous visits to the city. The 11-story glass and steel structure is easy to identify even from a distance. Its geometrically unconventional architecture is unmistakable, as is the fishnet stockings pattern all those hundreds of windows make.

Seattle's _Central Library,_ a massive building that had been a popular fieldtrip location back when Morty had been in elementary school and then later in middle school. His dad had once loftily referred to it as the 'flagship library' of the Seattle Public Library system—a comment that earned a heavy eye-roll from Summer.

And now here it is, gutted and repurposed and assimilated into the Federation as yet another extension of their branching influence, and suddenly Morty's stuck between a conflicting contradictory sense of personal outrage and enthusiastic curiosity.

Seeing the Federation's brand plastered across the library's surface should piss him off to no end—and it does, a little bit—but more than that, he thinks about all the books they must have brought down to replace what had been taken and destroyed. Books about the universe; things that up until several months ago, humans could only speculate on and dream about.

Things that Rick had never really gone into that much—either because he didn't think Morty could grasp the science behind it, or because he found the topic boring compared to all of the other wildly different dimensions and universes he could drag Morty along to instead.

Yes, okay, the Central Library had housed over a million books on its shelves back when it had been under human control—that's one fact that Morty remembers quite vividly from back when he'd first visited the library, because a million books being held in a single location anywhere is unbelievably _insane—_ and sure, all of those books are probably ashes in an incinerator somewhere if this past month has been anything to go by. Even for someone who's not much of a reader like himself, he knows that's a fucking tragedy.

But still… the amount of books the Federation could have stuffed in that building about things that they considered to be common knowledge—information that was far beyond what humanity had been able to figure out on their own. Knowledge is power, as they say, and the kind of shit that might be held within those glass walls could change the way Earth looks at science completely.

When his dad had first mentioned the Federation library, Morty hadn't been expecting anything more than a building the size of a small convenience store. Their universe is a massively grandiose place, with enough content to fill more books than you could read in a lifetime, but he hadn't really thought that the Federation would actually share any of that information with Earth. For them to fill up an 11-story building as massive as the Central Library though—

Morty has no doubts that all of the books they've provided are censored as hell at best, and a watered down cliff-notes version at worst, but even between all that censorship, with a million books to look through, there will always be some facts hidden among the fiction, things that got overlooked in the editing process.

The front entrance of the library has been equipped with standard Federation identity scanners, the same kind that Morty and his family had been processed through when they first returned to Earth. They're becoming more and more common these days, keeping track of the comings and goings of humans everywhere with a light probe to the tongue.

Completely noninvasive, they say, just the prick of a dull needle and the emitter light flashes green with a cheerful _pling_ —much more convenient than having to apply for and carry some physical form of identification.

Morty lines up behind Jessica and her friends, watches each one of them slip through the scanners and start to head into the building, smiling and talking about their different research projects. A dumpy-looking insectoid security guard is perched on a tall stool off to the side, monitoring the process with a bored look on their face. They stare unblinkingly with dull red eyes; their small beetle wings occasionally flicking out from under the curved shell against their back—and then it's Morty's turn. He steps up to the scanner and sticks out his tongue, but instead of a welcoming green, the emitter light flashes red and blares in rapid protest.

The security guard perks up a bit, like their day just got a lot more interesting, and there's almost something smug about the way they quickly buzz over to hover in Morty's path.

With a set of upper claws stretched out in front of them and their round body blocking the way in, the guard trills in a gleeful crackle, "You are not authorized to enter this building. Step away from the scanners and exit back down the sidewalk behind you."

All around him, people are beginning to stop and stare—any idle chatter petering out and being replaced with curious whispers—and both Jessica and her friends stand frozen off to the side, seemingly stuck between helping him or retreating.

"Young one," the guard says, this time more forcefully than before, "you are _not authorized_ to—"

And suddenly Morty is struck with a sense of déjà vu, the guard's words ringing in his ears as uncomfortably familiar for some strange reason, and in-between startled blinks, a phantom image flickers into place. Like a gossamer film overlaying reality, he sees this very entrance—sprawling glass and steel marred by the bulky identity scanners—only with a completely different insectoid blocking his way. One that is tall and lanky instead of short and bulbous, with antennae that is long and feathered compared to the bare, crooked stubs of the guard standing before him. It flashes across his vision like a solar flare, blurring the lines between reality and illusion until Morty finds himself not entirely sure _which one_ is actually standing in front of him.

He takes a faltering step back, blinking rapidly and then rubbing at his eyes in an attempt to dispel the wavering after-image. There's a buzzing in his head, this disorienting feeling of detachment, like he's not quite here—or maybe he's not even awake anymore and this is all just a weird dream—and for no fucking reason apparent to him, a tiny bubble of anxious paranoia forms inside his chest and starts to slowly expand outward. It's that same sense of danger he'd felt back on the bus, something that makes primal fight or flight instincts shiver in the back of his mind.

Shit—he is fucking _losing it_. His brain has officially reached that delusional point in sleep deprivation where you start to hallucinate, moving past the ' _might as well be drunk'_ stage and right on into ' _antipsychotics are a boy's best friend.'_

The guard has fallen silent, their bulging green eyes watching him cautiously and their stubby antennae quirked forward, likely waiting for Morty's reaction. Whatever rant they may have given about security and authorizations though, he hadn't heard a single word of it, nothing that is helpful at least, nothing that explains what's going on here.

Alternating between blinking and grinding his palms into closed eyes, just trying to rub away the crazy, Morty blurts out a stuttered croak of, "W-what? Why not?"

The guard rises up higher in the air, a seemingly deliberate move that lets them tower above him and look down with poorly masked contempt. If they had a nose, Morty is sure they would have sniffed disdainfully down at him.

"The library is for visitors with a more… _clean_ record," they say, "Not for one… such as yourself."

And just like that, the strange double-vision of overlapping realities abruptly snaps back into one with only the chubby beetle in front of him remaining—because isn't this just the piss-soaked cherry on top of his pile-of-shit sundae?

"A-a-are you _kidding me?_ " his voice cracks around the words— _because goddamn puberty, will you never end—_ but he's so angry he doesn't even have time to feel embarrassed. "I-I'm here to read a book, not buy a weapon!"

He can feel his cheeks flush with an angry heat, his blood pressure skyrocketing. It doesn't even matter that this is such a small offense compared to everything else the Federation's done to him and his family—he's still fucking livid.

The worst part about it all is that he doesn't even really _like_ the library. It's just the fucking principle of the whole thing. Even ex-cons can get a library card—or at least they _used_ to be able to.

"How—how else am I supposed to—" Morty grips at his hair, his nails biting into his scalp. "I have a damn school report to do," he says, his arms flailing out to his sides. "W-w-where else do you suggest I _go?_ "

He doesn't know what his face looks like in this moment, but it must be showing off at least a small degree of his internal fury because the guard flits back a nervous inch and starts to reach for something in their belt. Probably some kind of Federation regulated tazor or a gun, because that seems to be how things are going for Morty today.

And then a flash of red hair sweeps across his vision, Jessica's purple skirt fanning around her thighs as she steps in front of Morty for the second time that day and twists on her heel to face the guard. It happens so quickly that it takes a moment for his brain to catch up and realize that she's actually standing there—that she not only stepped forward to help like she had on the bus, she's put herself directly in the line of fire on top of it. She stands in front of Morty straight-backed and strong with both feet braced firmly on the ground, but at the same time she has her hands held up, palms facing out and non-threatening in a clear attempt to diffuse the situation.

"It's fine— _it's fine,_ " she's saying, her voice having that slight high pitch to it that people get when they're trying to fake being cheerful and accommodating—like someone working customer service whenever they have to deal with an especially irate shithead.

Keeping her eyes locked on the guard, she backs up a step towards Morty and reaches back blindly with one hand, fumbling to grab onto his coat sleeve as she says, "He was just leaving. Right, Morty?"

Internally, Morty balks. An indignant response is on the tip of his tongue, but Jessica tugs roughly on his sleeve before he can actually say anything, very clearly signaling for him to keep his mouth shut.

For a brief, irrational moment, he feels a spark of betrayal at her hasty dismissal—but logic is quick to squash that down, because he can't actually expect her to fight for him to stay, especially over something so small as admittance to a library.

Jessica's nice to him, sure, but she's nice to just about everyone else too. She's just a nice person in general. The few times they've interacted, they've gotten along pretty well, but it's what he keeps telling himself—about her and anyone else he interacts with at school—that they're not much more than good acquaintances to each other. The fact that she stepped forward at all and diffused the situation before it could escalate is more than Morty could ask for—and anyway, it's not like there's anything she could actually do or say to change the guard's mind.

His shoulders slump as all the fight drains out of him—because there is no winning against the federation, is there? They may not have arrested him, but he's definitely earned a permanent spot for himself on their shit list, and from the looks of it, they're doing all they can to create a prison without walls around him.

He's a convict with a collar, deluded into thinking he has freedoms and rights.

 _Libraries are a privilege, **inmate**. You're on the 'No-Fly' list, **inmate** , no off-world travel allowed. Careers are assigned, **inmate**. We know what's best for you and we certainly don't need your input, **inmate**._

Fuck it.

Fuck this and fuck that stupid report—he's _not_ doing it.

When it comes time to do their presentations and the instructor calls on him, he'll just throw his arms up in the air like ' _what-do-you-fucking-want-from-me?'_ and bullshit his way through it with a manic smile.

 _Aythea 14, it was oppressed and you liberated it. Two for you, Federation. Good fucking job on that whole freeing the savages thing or whatever. Give yourself a pat on the back and have a fucking cookie._

He's done. He just—he's done trying.

Pulling his sleeve from Jessica's grip, Morty turns and leaves without saying another word. He wraps his hands tight around the straps of his backpack, head down and glaring eyes on the sidewalk as he begins his trek back down the street in the direction of the bus stop. He clenches his teeth when he picks up on the sound of his classmates erupting into excited gossip the moment they think he's out of earshot.

' _This was a huge waste of my time,'_ he thinks, walking faster until their voices have faded into the distance.

And then he hears the sound of running footsteps behind him, the soft click of flats against the pavement and a voice calling out.

"Morty, wait!"

It's Jessica, and Morty could honestly not be more confused than he is now, because what is even going on here? No really, what the hell is happening today? He's having a hard-enough time wrapping his head around the fact that she stepped forward to help him _twice_ today, anything more than that is incomprehensible. Jessica doesn't run after people, people run after Jessica—and the only time anyone runs after Morty is when they're pissed at him.

His feet slow to a stop at the sound of her approaching footfalls, and with what Morty's sure is the dumbest dumbfounded look anyone could ever have, he slowly turns in place to face her. For reasons he can't understand, his shoulders hunch up defensively under the weight of his backpack the closer she gets, and in the back of his mind, a series of _wtf's_ are playing on repeat like a kind of mental white noise.

She catches up to him quick, not even a little out of breath from her sprint, and she whips out her cellphone before Morty can think of any kind of response.

"What's your research topic?" she immediately asks, swiping and tapping at her phone's screen one-handed.

"Huh?" he says, uncomprehending.

"Your topic?" she says, glancing up at him over her phone. "I can check a book out for you, or if they won't let me do that, I can text you pictures of the pages."

She tells him this like what she's offering to do for him is such a simple solution, as if it's no big deal at all and will take her about five minutes to do. Meanwhile, Morty can only stare at her blankly, his mind processing her words about as well as someone trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, because the only real explanation he can come up with for any of this doesn't add up. People don't go to this much trouble for someone they see as just _kind of_ an acquaintance, which really only leaves him with two very unlikely options—and Morty's not about to kid himself that it might be option one.

What he blurts out next is just about the last thing he expects himself to say, but whatever verbal filters he has left are completely fucked-to-hell from all the insomnia, and the words are already out there before Morty has a chance to re-think them.

"Jessica, are we friends?"

He sounds absolutely baffled when he says it. The question itself is cringe-worthy if only because flat-out asking someone if you're friends isn't something you should do—not unless the person you're asking is as socially inept as you are—and that's not just Morty's lack of confidence and anxiety talking. The moment he says the words, Jessica's eyebrows shoot up and her mouth clicks shut. The hand holding her phone drops down to her side.

He definitely caught her off guard, and as three agonizing seconds of awkward silence ticks by, Morty mentally debates the merits of simply turning back around and leaving before she can think up an answer to give him.

He settles for cutting in and saving her from having to respond at all.

"Oh jeez, th-that was a weird thing to ask, wasn't it?" he says, pressing one hand to his forehead and fumbling for the right thing to say to get him out of this. "Sh-shit, I'm sorry. You don't have to answer that. I-I'm—I am just _really_ tired today."

"Morty, relax," she says with a light chuckle. Smiling at him, she shrugs her shoulders and says, "Yeah, I guess we are friends."

He wonders when the hell that happened. It's like the platonic equivalent of not knowing you're on a date until about half-way through one.

Jessica turns her attention back to her phone, thumbing it out of sleep-mode. As she types in the passcode, she says almost absentmindedly, "I mean, I've known you since sixth grade, even if we didn't really talk back then."

She actually knew he existed in sixth grade?

Why is he only finding out about this now?

"So, your topic?" she says.

"The, uh—the liberation of Aythea 14," he tells her, feeling half-dazed.

He spells out the name of the planet or whatever it is to her as well—along with his cellphone number so she'll know how to reach him—and her fingers dance across the screen as she types it all into her phone. A second later, he can feel his own phone buzzing in his coat pocket from the text she just sent him.

Had this been a normal situation, Morty would probably be losing his shit over the fact that he'd just swapped phone numbers with a girl for the first time ever—that girl being _Jessica_ no less—but as it is, he's just _immensely grateful_ that she even thought to help him like this. He still has no desire to write out his report, all things considered, but he'll do it if Jessica finds any information on his topic.

Promising to text him later with the details, Jessica smiles and waves at him over her shoulder as she turns to head back to the library. With his hand half-raised to wave back, Morty stares after her glassy-eyed and nonplussed, watching as she breaks into a run halfway down the sidewalk to catch up with her friends.

He ends up standing there for several minutes after she's disappeared from sight, trying to wrap his mind around what happened. The whole thing is just too fucking surreal, almost like he's sleep-walking—and he questions again if he actually is asleep and none of this is real. Pulling out his cellphone to look at the random emoticons she texted him doesn't help, and adding her number into his contacts just makes him feel more detached than before. Walking back to the bus stop, he can barely feel hit feet touching the ground.

It's a thirty-something minute wait before the next bus going his way will show up—long enough for the sun to start going down and for an uncomfortable number of tourist aliens to crowd around him on all sides, waiting for their own buses or shuttles. A few of the aliens even blatantly stare at him and snap a picture or two to the point where Morty pulls his hood up and ducks his head down just to hide from it all.

By the time his bus finally does show up he is fucking _elated_ to see it. He slips past the aliens around him and ninjas his way to the front of the crowd so that he'll be the first one to board. All of the seats are already taken, but Morty manages to find a nice corner to wedge himself into—one that's strategically placed so that he's boxed in by a wall of humans who are both bigger and taller than he is. Any aliens that board the bus after him certainly won't be bothering him there.

Had Morty been sitting, he would've set an alarm on his phone to go off for when he gets closer to home, but since he's standing, he doesn't bother. Just having to consciously keep his balance against the rocking of the bus is enough to stave off sleep. Damned if his body doesn't try to anyway though—between his vision blurring out and his eyes blinking closed of their own accord for longer and longer periods of time.

Morty smothers a yarn—blinks and the tall woman and overweight man standing in front of him are suddenly a group of twenty-something-year-olds standing around a portable grocery cart packed full of food.

Another blink and they're replaced by two women in long dresses giving a twenty-dollar bill to a scruffy-looking guy with a dog sitting by his side and a cardboard sign held in hand.

Eyes sliding closed for a longer blink this time and his breath easing out of him in a slow exhale—just for a moment, he swears—when he drags tired lids open for a third time, he feels much more disoriented, but at the same time can recognize right off that there's a drastic difference between now and one blink before. The ground beneath his feet is completely still—softer, carpeted—and the lighting around him has changed into something more warm and bright.

He's not on the bus anymore.

He's… he's holding something—his head hanging down to stare at the palm of his hand where a thin silver tube rests. It's about the size of a finger with keyrings looped through each end and a chain connecting between them.

Morty's gaze snaps up, his eyes darting around himself and taking in his surroundings. The place looks like a hoarder's house, but at the same time there's a kind of organized chaos to it all. There are knick-knacks and old sporting equipment and a bunch of other random junk covering tables and shelves and the walls around him. It's the sale signs that give him answers though.

He's in a small shop—a thrift store or an antique store or a pawn shop—something along those lines. How the hell he got here in the first place though is beyond him. Did he sleepwalk here or—fuck, maybe this time he actually is dreaming.

"Kid, you've been staring at that thing for twenty minutes now," a boisterous voice calls out from behind Morty, scaring the ever-loving crap out of him. He just about jumps a foot in the air, his soul practically ejecting from his body—so definitely not a dream then, because that sure as hell would have woken him up if it was.

"You gonna buy it or what?" the guy asks, completely unperturbed by Morty's reaction. "I gotta be closin' up shop soon."

Morty twists around to face the man and—oh jeez, his painkillers have definitely stopped working by this point. His hand clenches into a fist around the silver trinket. He has to take a moment to collect himself, inhale and exhale a few shaky breaths and focus on the matter at hand. The silver thing, he doesn't even know what it is, let alone have the money to buy it even if it's not that expensive—and the shopkeeper's still waiting for an answer from him.

"No, I-I'm uh—just looking," he finally says.

The shopkeeper looks less than thrilled that Morty's been wasting his time, but Morty's thoughts are far too focused on the painkillers sitting in his backpack to really be bothered by whatever the man is probably thinking of him. Casting a quick glance at the silver tube one last time, he sets it down on the nearest table and makes a hasty escape, awkwardly wishing the man a good night as he leaves. The moment Morty steps out onto the street though and the store's front door clicks shut behind him, he's struck with the crippling realization that it's the nighttime and he has absolutely no idea where he is.

Well-aware that the shopkeeper is giving him the evil eye through the storefront windows, Morty moves over to the nearest street light and practically hugs up against its side. The temperature has gone down; not enough for him to see his breath, but enough to make him shiver. There's also very little traffic and not that many people walking the streets, but Morty takes a deep breath and tells himself to stay calm. He's been in way worse situations than this, and with less resources too.

The first thing he does is fish his phone out of his pocket. When he turns it on though and looks at the time, he baulks. Over an hour has passed since he last looked at it when he was waiting for the bus to come. Going off what he remembers, some of that time had been spent on the bus ride home, but that still leaves a lot of time unaccounted for, and who even knows what stop he got off at. It's hard to recognize anything at night like this.

Scratching at the back of his neck with his free hand, Morty quickly turns his phone's GPS on next, letting _Google_ _Maps_ do all the guesswork for him—and thank god, the stop he must have gotten off at wasn't too far out from his actual stop. According to _Maps_ , home is only about a fifteen-minute drive away—not too bad if he actually had a car, but that's a crap-ton of walking otherwise.

Shrugging off his backpack to set down by his feet, Morty taps the _Messages_ icon on his phone to look over his unread texts. There are some from Jessica already, all of them pictures of textbook pages as promise. Morty makes a mental note to look that all later, once he's actually back home. The next two texts are from Mom asking him when he'll be home from the library and there's also one from Summer calling him a dickhead and telling him to answer Mom.

That just leaves him with the question of who he's gonna call.

' _Mom or Summer? Mom or Summer?_ ' he thinks, mentally debating the pros and cons of who will be the easiest one to deal with. ' _Mom or Summer… or Dad?'_

He already knows the answer though. The one who would be the most pissed off that he _didn't_ call them first is definitely Mom. Dad might get a little pouty and Summer just flat-out won't care, but Mom would be irritated. Mom would want to be the first one called.

With a long-suffering sigh, Morty holds down his phone's _Home_ button to activate _Siri_ and dully says, "Call Mom."

 _ **[Calling 'Mom'…]**_

' _She's still gonna be pretty pissed though.'_

.

* * *

 _TBC_

 _I am very tired myself.  
_


	23. Chapter 23

_I ended up splitting Chapter 23 into 2 parts because the chapter was getting to be TOO LONG, and I didn't want to leave you guys waiting any longer while I finished up the last half of it-so Chapter 24 will take place during the same night as 23, because technically it's the second half of 23._  
 _Seriously guys, the amount of self-loathing I have for how long this took me is beyond comprehension._  
 _ **Chapter Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, and Morty has a brief flashback to the bathroom scene with King Jellybean.**_

* * *

.

 **Chapter Twenty-Three**

Morty gets his second wind halfway into the drive home. He hadn't really thought he had any energy left to spare, but apparently somewhere woven deep into his neural pathways, there's a _Low Battery_ signal going off in warning and his body decides to completely overcompensate for this by throwing out whatever reserves he may have left—squeezing out every last drop from his adrenal glands and scraping the sticky glucose residue from his liver.

It's his body's swan song to consciousness, a sudden surge of manic energy as potent as snorting a line of Kalaxian Crystals. Very likely it'll be just as fleeting too. When the crash inevitably comes, he knows that nothing short of a _Pulp Fiction_ syringe to the heart will bring him out of it.

With one leg bouncing restlessly and his hand pushing up beneath his coat sleeve to scratch a path up his arm, Morty thinks about all the different sedatives he has to choose from waiting for him at home. There's Dad's pills of course, but he also still has the box of Benadryl sitting on his nightstand, and he's pretty sure they have an old bottle of NyQuil tucked away in a closet somewhere too. Maybe he'll just mix it all together, grind the pills up and stir it into the NyQuil—make himself a nice shot of _Go-The-Fuck-To-Sleep—_ because he's pretty sure he's not blinking as often as he should be and there's no way that's normal _or_ healthy.

The traffic lights above them cast a red tint over the car, illuminating the front seat in cherry highlights over dark shadows. It's mood lighting fit for a nightmare, and for a brief moment, Morty's mind gets away from him—his exhaustion distorting reality into something _too quiet, unsettling, nightmarish—_ because when he looks over at his mom, he sees her as some kind of wraith looming in the driver's seat. Not quite his mom, but rather a cheap imitation with too many crooked edges and the red reflecting unnaturally off her eyes; sitting there with her back ramrod straight and fingers like claws curled so tight around the steering wheel that Morty can hear the vinyl creek.

It's all so very reminiscent of the few alternate dimensional counterparts he's met of his mom, ones who had been… _less-than-motherly_ to say the least, and Morty can't quite stop himself from flinching at the sight of it now. Of course, the figment vanishes just as quickly as it came—there and gone from one second to the next, much like spotting a phantom image out of the corner of your eye—but regardless of this, his flinch had been enough to draw Mom's attention back over to him.

 _Normal_ blue eyes watch him carefully, searchingly.

She hasn't spoken a word to him for the past eight minutes now, not since she first pulled up next to him on the side of the road and he could offer her no real explanation as to why he'd backed up a good five feet from the car with his hands clapped over his ears and refused to get in until she turned the radio off—because earplugs don't really offer much in the way of coverage when music is blaring out of speakers that surround you on all sides.

While his earplugs may work well enough with distant or faint music—or in cases where the music is sudden and unexpected and he needs those few extra seconds they give him to be able to turn the source of the sound off—anything more than that is enough to set off the foreboding twinge in his head that precedes the start of a vision. None of this is anything he can tell his mom though, not without her questioning him on everything else.

The lights flick back to green, but the car doesn't move. For a few tense seconds, they sit there under the lights and Mom stares him down with her brow furrowed and her mouth pressed into a tight line. There's no one waiting behind them, so there's nothing to stop this moment from dragging on, and Morty can feel his shoulders hunching up all on their own, like he's unconsciously bracing himself for the inevitable lecture he's going to get about being more responsible and other crap like that.

Mom doesn't do any of that though; just turns her eyes back to the road and calmly eases down on the gas pedal. When she does speak, her voice is completely neutral, like she isn't angry or irritated with him at all.

It throws Morty off completely.

"So… what was it again?" she asks dully, then parrots back the explanation he'd given over the phone. "You fell asleep on the bus and missed your stop?"

It's not his best lie, but he'd like to think it's believable enough; something simple that he'd actually be very likely to do. Somehow though, her question feels like a trap—and somewhere deep in the back of his mind, there's an instinct telling him to proceed with caution.

"Uhh, y-yeah, I—"

"And this was after you went to the library with friends," she says, cutting in quick before he can really answer, yet still using that same neutral tone. It's concerning in a way he can't quite put his finger on.

"I-iin Seattle, yeah," he says.

"And that's it?" she glances over at him briefly. "That's everything?"

"Th-that about covers it. Was pretty uuh-uuneventful," he says with a shrug, trying to be dismissive about the whole thing, like it really isn't a big deal.

"Mm-hmm," Mom hums, and here her voice shifts to something a bit more passive aggressive; closer to what he'd been expecting from the start, "Except for the part where you freaked out and wouldn't get into the car until I turned off the radio."

"W-well, I wouldn't say I ' _freaked out_ ,'" Morty says, fumbling to keep up.

"What _would_ you call it then?" she asks sharply. "Because you never did quite explain that to me before."

"I—I, uh… I dunno." Morty twists his hands up in the seatbelt strap across his chest, pulling at it anxiously. He tries to come up with something to tell her, simple and believable just like before, but he's drawing a complete blank. His brain may feel like a hive right now, but the bees are all clearly dead.

And despite this insane amount of extra energy pumping through his veins, Morty is just so, so tired—too tired to be effectively deceitful, much less deal with his mom's interrogation techniques.

In the end, that's what he decides to tell her. A modicum of truth mixed in with the fabrications; Morty flattens his hands against his face and says, "Honestly, I'm just… really tired."

He's not looking at her, so he can't be sure what kind of reaction she has to that—nothing aside from her faint mutter of ' _Tired. Right._ ' It doesn't sound like she believes him, but she doesn't say anything more than that, and Morty's not about to start the conversation up again himself by asking questions.

The car falls into a strained silence for the remainder of the drive home. When they finally do pull into the driveway, Morty can't unbuckle his seatbelt fast enough. He's the first one out of the car and up the walkway to the front door, in such a hurry to escape that he very nearly collides with Dad the moment he steps inside.

"Woah, buddy." Dad's hands clap down onto Morty's shoulders, steadying him when he wavers on his feet, his backpack nearly overbalancing him—then just as quickly, one of those hands moves up to press against his forehead. The concern is obvious in his dad's voice when he says, "You're looking a little peakish there. Are you coming down with something?"

Morty blinks up at the man, struggling to process the past five seconds. Dad's wearing his work clothes, so he must have been on his way out the door for his night shift.

"Oh, um—no, I'm okay," Morty quickly assures him. "Just feeling kinda—"

"Tired. Right, Jerry?" Mom says tonelessly, pushing past them both. In the brighter lighting of the foyer, Morty can pick out the stress lines around her eyes.

Dad falters, at a loss for words as he looks from Morty to Mom, "Uh—"

"There's pizza in the fridge if you want it," Mom mutters, her back to them both as she disappears into the kitchen. Shortly after, Morty can hear her rummaging around in the cupboard and the distinct clink of glass. It doesn't take a genius to know that she's pulling out a bottle of wine.

Dad watches the kitchen entryway with a frown. He looks like he's thinking of going after her, which could really go either way. In most cases, Mom's better off left alone when she gets like this, but sometimes she'll get pissed off if it looks like Dad's avoiding the problem. In this case though, Morty _is_ the problem. He may not understand all the specific details—there was definitely some implied unspoken shit that flew right over his head back in the car—but he gets the basic gist of it.

He knows how weird it must look, the way he's been acting these past few weeks. He's been stressing her out. Disappearing off the radar like that probably just added to it all.

She's mad because she's worried.

When Dad takes a hesitant step towards the kitchen, Morty grabs his sleeve to stop him. His parents' relationship is strained and dysfunctional enough on its own; it hardly seems fair that his dad get involved in something that is ultimately Morty's fault.

"Sorry if I worried you guys," Morty finally says, and he realizes it's something he probably should've told his mom back in the car. He knows that he should go tell her now, knows that he should promise them both that it won't happen again, but with the way his life is going, it's not something he can guarantee.

Just another lie in a long string of them.

Dad sighs and ruffles a hand through Morty's hair; tells him to try and get some sleep tonight as he grabs his car keys from the hook by the front door.

"Maybe give your mom some space tonight," Dad says, keeping his voice down so that it doesn't carry into the kitchen. "and apologize in the morning?"

Morty nods, fidgeting in place and scratching at one arm. The itch prickles beneath his skin like an internal rash, blooming and fading randomly in radiating patches—from his arms to his knuckles to his back and sides and up to his neck.

Forcing a reassuring smile onto his face, Morty waves his dad out the door with his usual stuttered, _'Have a good night at work.'_ The moment the front door clicks shut though, he's over by the kitchen entryway, hovering there just long enough to watch Mom drain her first glass of red wine.

As he turns to flee up the stairs to his bedroom, dark spots flicker and dance out of the corner of his eye.

.

* * *

.

That pill definitely goes down sideways. Such a tiny little thing, this innocuous tablet of pink cradled in plastic and foil, and yet he can feel its edges as it slides down his esophagus. Lying in bed with his back propped up against the pillows, it almost feels like the pill is lodged somewhere down at the base of his neck beneath his sternum; a sharp point that no amount of coughing or clearing his throat or drinking water will get rid of.

The words trickle through his mind as an unconscious thought— _dysphagia, trouble swallowing—_ more knowledge that he shouldn't have, just like the exhaust break system and air compressors on the bus, and all he can really do is shake his head and tell himself that he must have heard it on TV at some point.

Tapping his fingertips against his chest like maybe he can knock the pill loose, Morty clears his throat again and gives one last forceful cough before he flips the book back open to where he'd last left off.

He's well into chapter four and Freddie Boyce and some of the other State Boys have just figured out that the institution's large ventilation shafts could be used to sneak around the so-called school at night after lights-out. It's a nice reprieve from the more unsettling start to the chapter, which had described some of the ways one of the school's attendants would humiliate these kids; not just calling them names and telling them how worthless and stupid they are, but also doing shit like making kids get down on their hands and knees and push a piece of food around the floor with their nose.

His hand's shake just so slightly as he turns the page. It's mostly due to his exhaustion mixing with how _fucking wired_ he feels, but at the same time, he thinks a small part of it is because he's kind of starting to hate this book.

It's not that the book is bad. It just… digs at him in a way that's a bit too close for comfort.

From those first few pages of the Foreword he'd read through in class, it'd been obvious why his English teacher assigned the book to them in the first place. The concepts the author had delved into about an outdated belief that intelligence is genetic—

' _…extreme ideology, once presented as scientific fact, that persuaded great numbers of Americans that certain substandard children must be identified, hunted down, and locked away.'_

—the results are all too similar to what's happening to humanity as a whole right now; IQ tests being used to separate the 'dumb' kids from the 'smart' kids.

And then what had happened to those 'dumb' kids back then compared to what the Federation's currently doing—

 _'Shop courses that trained children for factory work were added to the curriculum, and residents did most of the chores that kept the place going—after acquiring basic academic and job skills, residents were expected to graduate to a life beyond the institution.'_

Morty wonders if the Federation does this to all the planets that join their ranks, or if this time they decided to take a page out of Earth's own history books. The only positive thing about this all is that he and his classmates are still allowed a lot more freedom in their situation compared to the kids back in the early 1900s.

 _'Public attitudes about them had already begun to change… From this perspective, the students in Waltham could never be trained adequately for life on their own. Worse if they were allowed to leave state custody, they would produce many mentally deficient offspring who would become a burden on society… Eventually, politicians responded to the eugenics lobby with policies that turned state schools into asylums where the genetically inferior could be isolated forever.'_

There's a reason Morty hasn't picked the book up since reading through all this bullshit two days ago in class. Knowing what had happened in the past leaves a foreboding shadow of possibilities hanging over whatever future he has left here on Earth, because what is there to really stop the Federation from deciding to do something similar? They've changed so much about Earth already, and so far no humans with any real power or influence have done anything to stop them. It doesn't exactly fill him with confidence that someone would step in now if the worst really were to happen.

So yeah, he's not what you'd call a huge fan of _The State Boys Rebellion._ The book is an unsettling reminder of how bad things could become—and for that matter, how bad they already are.

It's for those exact reasons though that he's even reading the book now.

Because the _Liberation of Aythea 14_ is as follows:

Approximately _[300 Earth years]_ ago, a Federation outpost picked up on an unidentified signal coming from an unexplored area of space. When they weren't able to translate the signal, they decided to send some ships out to investigate. That's what led them to Aythea 14.

Turns out it's a planet after all, one that was named for its fourteen moons.

Long story short, the unknown signal was actually a _distress_ signal. Apparently some kind of space pirate found the planet before the Federation did and decided to capitalize on the fact that the Aytheans were an extremely low-tech society.

How does that saying go? Something about how super advanced technology might as well be magic? That's pretty much what happened here.

Basically, the Evil Alien Space Pirateä descended from the sky in a _mystical flying machine_ claiming to be the Aythean's version of God. Faced with that, the Aytheans were pretty much like, _'Well shit, alright then,_ ' and from there, the space pirate was free to do whatever and take whatever they wanted from the planet. Goods, services, planetary resources and even fucking slavery, all of it was offered up in the name of religion and ceremonial sacrifices—like this was clearly a bad dude, and at least a small portion of the planet's natives seemed to agree if the distress signal was anything to go by.

Cue the Federation showing up in a Big Damn Heroes moment, freeing the Aytheans from space pirate tyranny via truth bombs and… probably regular bombs too. They straight-up kicked the temple doors in and arrested that lying con-artist. Of course, usually removing such a high profile figure in a society like this would cause a power vacuum, but the Federation managed to smooth things over by sending rescue ships and emergency supplies and diplomats who knew their shit when it came to conflict resolution and ' _global governance'—_ whatever the fuck that means.

So there were parades and fireworks and the whole audience stood up and clapped. The Aytheans were so extremely grateful that they immediately signed the dotted line to join the Galactic Federation and they all lived happily ever after—probably as some kind of luxury vacation planet.

Morty's paraphrasing, but that's essentially what the three pages Jessica had texted him said.

Just more propaganda bullshit, right?

Except when Morty first got up to his room and skimmed through it all, for a brief moment the thought passed through his mind that if even a fraction of this is true, maybe the Federation isn't all that bad, because nothing's truly _100% evil_ , right? So maybe the Federation does actually do some good out there in the universe, and Morty's just bias because he has a terrorist for a grandfather. What happened to the Aytheans _was_ pretty damn similar to what Rick did with the microverse, and when it came to the Federation, Rick did kinda set Morty up on a path of _'Us vs. Them'_ from the very beginning—

It's exactly the kind of passive thinking of someone slowly succumbing to indoctrination. Dismiss it as a moment of weakness as much as you like, it doesn't change the fact that the thought had been a legitimate consideration on his part.

Morty might as well be gaslighting himself. Give it a week or so and he'll be just one step away from your typical desensitized apathy.

Reading ' _State Boys'_ was his much-needed slap to the face—because even if the Federation _is_ doing some good out there in the universe, they certainly aren't doing it here.

' _Maybe they just really hate Earth_ ,' Morty thinks as he flips to the next page, only half-reading what's there. ' _Like they found out Rick was from here and decided 'fuck that one planet in particular.''_

Briefly, his mind drifts to that report he'd found in his room, the one detailing all kinds of terrible things the Federation has done. He'd tucked it away with the other ones in a pile of notebooks shoved to one corner of his room, back when he was still doing his music experiments. Morty hasn't look at it since that first night he'd read through them all. Considering that he doesn't actually know who wrote the report or where they got their information from, he brushes the thought of it aside now.

Swiping his thumb restlessly along the corner of the book to make that repetitive _thwip, thwip_ sound of the pages fanning out, Morty reads through yet another unsettling passage of even more fucked up ways the state school's attendants abused the kids stuck there. Apparently when you combine overcrowding along with the fact that these kids were getting older, you get an increase in violence as well. Morty starts skimming over the words at this point because he really doesn't need to know all the gritty details.

Then, quite abruptly, there's a scene break and the new paragraph begins with a sentence about how one of the boys was first sexually assaulted when they were eleven years old.

' _He had awakened sometime after 2 A.M. and gotten out of bed to use the toilet. As he turned away—'_

Morty snaps the book shut, moving on autopilot as he drops it off the side of the bed and twists over onto his side to face the wall. Pressing his hands over his eyes, he pulls his knees up to his chest and breathes out a groaning litany of _fuck, fuck, fuck._

It feels like it's been a while since he's thought about what had happened in that bathroom—or had almost happened. His mind had kinda blocked it out after a while, shoved it somewhere deep down to keep himself from obsessing over it. The images flicker against the back of his eyelids now though; brief horrifying snapshots of filthy ceramic tiles and stained porcelain, a broken door hanging on one hinge, and the phantom feeling of sticky hands gripping his shoulders, pushing him.

 _'Stop,'_ he tells himself, sliding his hands up and curling trembling fingers into his hair. ' _Nothing happened. You were_ _ **fine.**_ '

Still though, if he was even thinking about attempting sleep before, there's just no fucking way now.

He bolts upright and scrambles out of bed, breathing out a long slow exhale and shaking out his hands like he can shake loose the sudden nerves. His first instinct is to turn on the only other lamp in his room and make everything as bright as possible.

It's past nine at night and the house is entirely too quiet, too dark.

' _Mom and Summer must have already gone to bed._ '

Morty wraps his arms around himself in a tight hug. He almost wants to go see if one of them is still awake, preferably Summer considering how he left things with his mom. He has no idea what he'd tell either one of them, but the sudden need for company twists his stomach up into an anxious knot.

He paces stressful circles around his room, scratching pink patterns down his arms and across his stomach.

For those first few weeks after the… the _bathroom incident_ , Morty had distracted himself by hanging out with Rick; helping him with his weird science experiments and binge-watching interdimensional cable together. They'd gone on a few adventures too, but those had all been fairly easy and uneventful—and if Morty flinched more than usual, or had the occasional freak-out over something as benign as not being able to find the TV remote or Summer leaving a puddle of water on the bathroom tiles, Rick was good about not calling attention to it the way Mom or Dad would.

It became his default coping mechanism, using Rick as a distraction from the more unpleasant moments in his life, which is kind of hilarious considering that a lot of those moments were at least partially Rick's fault. One might call it a vicious cycle—and Morty's not stupid, he knows that as far as coping mechanisms go, his could hardly be considered healthy. It worked for him though.

 _'Except now it's not even an option…'_

Brown eyes drop down to his cellphone sitting on the nightstand, his music playlist all ready to go. He only considers it for a fraction of a second before shaking his head and turning away. Not wanting to risk another nightmare-worthy vision goes without saying, but he also knows that inducing a seizure or whatever the fuck it is because he's freaking out over something that happened a year ago isn't coping, it's self-medicating. It's something Rick would do; a variant to his alcohol and drug use, or Mom with her wine drinking.

No. Morty is not so desperate to see that asshole—hallucinated fabrication or otherwise—that he'll fall into the same patterns of addiction his family seems to have a history of.

 _Break the cycle, Morty. Focus on science._

A sharp bark of laughter escapes him at the words echoing in the back of his mind. Focus on science. Should be simple, right?

Biting at his lower lip, Morty's gaze drifts over to the posters hanging up over his bed. Between the four mystery reports he'd found, and the frankly erratic collage of random math formulas he has hidden beneath those posters, he's certainly not lacking in options. It's as good of a distraction as any other.

Like… maybe he could try typing some of that math into Google search. See if anything comes up. Given how little he knows on the subject, those math problems could actually be well-known formulas. Maybe there's even some kind of math genius out there who's already done the legwork and solved a bunch of the problems, and then all Morty really needs to do is piece together the answers like a puzzle.

That—that could work, couldn't it? It's not the best solution, but at least it's something, and it's better than just taking the easy way out and… and getting high on music, or whatever the fuck it is that's happening.

See? He doesn't need Rick at all.

And he doesn't need to wake up Summer or Mom either. He can deal with this on his own. In fact, he's feeling calmer already—so very **calm** —now that he has a task to focus on.

It takes him a moment to realize he's been digging his nails into his arms this whole time.

Grimacing, Morty quickly unlatches his fingers and rubs away the crescent marks left behind. He breathes out a stuttered ' _Jesus fuck'_ as he climbs up onto his bed and starts untacking the first poster. You wouldn't think just by looking at it that his pinup of Angelica Bridges would be concealing such complex mathematical equations, and for some reason, the thought of it is so hilarious, he's hit with another bout of laughter.

"I'm getting there," he mutters to himself, peeling the _Baywatch_ star's poster from the wall and letting it drop to his mattress. "G-getting there, getting there, _get-ting_ _ **there**_ , where everything is just _s-sooo_ fucking hilarious—"

Symptom number _whatever_ of sleep deprivation: finding humor in the most humorless of situations. It is a state of being Morty has visited many times before. He once had an uncontrollable giggle fit when the duct tape came loose on Rick's ship and one of the headlights flew off into space. If he's remembering right, Morty's pretty sure the light bounced off the side of a passing ship, and he just about died in his seat laughing.

 _Sleep deprivation boosts activity in the brain's mesolimbic pathway, a part of the brain that is driven by the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is linked to the brain's reward center—_

' _Jesus fuck,_ _ **stop—**_ '

The last of his posters slip down the wall and a jumble of horrendous math stares back at him. It's so complicated that Morty's brain immediately shuts down—says _nope, nope,_ _ **hell no**_ —and fucks off to _Never-in-a-million-_ _ **years**_ _-Land_ , leaving behind a high-pitched whine of absolutely nothing _._

Like, Morty can't even tell if this is supposed to be algebra or calculus or—or… what's more advance than calculus? He's so stupid, he doesn't even know. His head is so empty, it's almost like he can physically feel it. Just this weird drifty sensation; and the whole time, Angelica Bridges keeps smiling up at him in all her swimsuit glory.

He bends down to grab his phone off the nightstand, thumbs past the lock screen and gets as far as tapping open Google when he hears it.

The sound of crinkling paper.

It catches his attention immediately—not so much because of the sound itself as it is because it's not coming from the posters down by his feet. Whatever it is, it's coming from somewhere behind him, and Morty finds himself locking up on instinct. The sound it subtle, faint, but in the deafening silence of his room, it stands out like the buzz of insect wings. Not normal. Out of place.

Morty's head snaps around, body twisting to follow and his eyes stretch wide and alert, darting around his room to find the source of the noise, the intruder in his space. The image of a mouse or a roach rustling among his things splashes across his mind.

Another quiet crinkle and he spots it, brown eyes locking onto his desk across the room, where crumpled papers and random paraphernalia litter its surface like debris. There, among it all, is a single paper crane, one of the ones he tried to make without the influence of music, with its wings bent all wrong and its tiny little head crushed in.

Morty swears the thing just fucking moved.

At first, he thinks he's seeing it wrong, his brain trying to apply logic to the impossible—that there must be some kind of bug he's not seeing crawling around behind the crane—but then right before his eyes, the damn thing turns its head and looks at him. It looks at him and waggles its bent wings and then turns its little paper head away and pecks at the padlock resting at its side.

His phone slips from limp fingers, falling on top of the posters, forgotten, and Morty jumps down from his bed so fast, he trips over his own feet and nearly faceplants on the carpet.

' _Definitely losing it.'_

He rushes over to his desk, slipping on a stray piece of paper as he goes and catching himself on his computer chair.

The crane looks back up at him with its crumpled-up face and its twisted wings. It tilts its head to the side like it's actually capable of curiosity, and thinking, and feeling—and Morty responds like any normal person would by slamming his hand down on top of it and crushing it flat against his desk. He does it so forcefully that his palm burns from the impact.

Admittedly, he probably could have handled the whole thing better, but he may or may not be hyperventilating, so he's giving himself a pass on this one. He's seen a lot of crazy shit in the past, but he draws the fucking line at sentient paper.

Morty pulls his hand away, half afraid that he'll feel the thing moving beneath his palm, which would just be so goddamn creepy. The death throes of paper come to life. Have you ever stepped on a very large bug and it didn't die right away? That's kind of what he's visualizing here.

Gross.

 _'You're hallucinating,'_ he tells himself, fingers rubbing against his palms reflexively. _'Clearly, that is the only reasonable explanation for this.'_

Both auditory and visual. That's another sign of sleep deprivation, isn't it? Seeing and hearing things? He vaguely remembers his math teacher once mentioning that, back when she'd still been in college, she'd been awake so long during finals week that she started seeing Muppets crawling out of the walls.

In comparison, a little bit of moving paper isn't all that bad, is it?

Despite being all smushed now, the crane stirs back to life. It can't seem to unflatten itself, but it wriggles and twitches against his desk.

 _'Nope. Still creepy,'_ Morty thinks, backing up a quick step.

There's just something about the jerky way it twists its head to look up at Morty that's… disturbing, to say the least. It may not be _Muppets crawling out of walls_ creepy, but it's still pretty up there in terms of spine-chilling imagery—like that is some _Silent Hill_ bullshit right there, and Morty wants no part of it.

Keeping his eyes on the paper crane, not blinking or looking away for even a second, Morty side-steps over to his bookcase and blindly fumbles to grab the biggest thing he can find—a copy of Todd McLellan's _Things Come Apart—_ and he flits back over to the desk just as quick to smack the book down on top of the crane five or six times in rapid succession. Distantly, as knick-knacks rattle and tip over and pens go flying, it occurs to Morty that if anyone had been asleep before, they're probably awake now, but he's too focused on the paper crane to really care, watching how it shivers in-between each blow until finally, _finally_ , it stops moving.

Not that it had actually been moving to begin with, because—and he has to stress this to himself again—he's hallucinating. It's just paper, and none of that had been real.

It takes him a moment to notice that his cheeks are wet, at which point he thinks, _'Oh god, are those tears?'_

Is he seriously crying about this? Like he just had to put down an injured animal and _not_ crush satanic origami into oblivion?

The laughter is quick to follow, both incredulous and overwhelmed, and Morty drops backwards into his computer chair. He hugs the hardcover picture book against his chest, hunches over it to wipe at his eyes and laugh and laugh some more. It goes on like this for several minutes, a repetitious cycle of laughter and tears; in the end, stopped only by a sudden bout of hiccups.

This is it. This is what his life has become.

It has been _'X'_ number of hours that he's been awake—and Morty's using ' _X'_ because this would definitely be a number he'd have to solve for. When you're counting the sections of time you've actually been asleep for in minutes instead of hours, things start to get a little fuzzy in the science of sleep as to whether or not those minutes equal out into enough time to actually be beneficial. Morty tries to count it all out on his fingers now, but he keeps losing track somewhere past twenty-something hours awake verses maybe… three hours asleep when you combine all the minutes—and at what point can the minutes no longer be combined because the time between them had been too long?

Do minutes expire?

Is there a limit to how far he can pro-rate time?

In Morty's scientific opinion, were anyone to actually ask, he'd say that _'X'_ equals _'a lot.'_

He has been awake for _a lot_ of hours.

Logic dictates that this would be a good time to return to his bed and take another crack at falling asleep. However, logic stopped factoring into Morty's life long before inanimate objects started moving around, so he stays where he is, slouched down in his computer chair and hiccupping, hiccupping, hiccupping—

When he catches movement out of the corner of his eye, he almost starts laughing again.

It's a second paper crane, one that most definitely wasn't there a minute ago. This one had been made out of blue paper whereas the other had been white, and it's just as awkwardly folded and demented looking as its counterpart had been. It flutters across the desk like a little bluebird, settling lightly next to its fallen brethren, and somehow, despite not having any eyes or facial features, when it pecks at its flattened friend and then peers up at Morty, he swears the thing looks accusatory.

Suddenly the book he's holding feels too much like a smoking gun.

"L-look man," Morty says, dumping the book on the ground and raising both hands up as if he'd never been holding it in the first place. "H-he-he was like that when I got here, I swear."

The need to lie for self-preservation's sake is wired into his brain as automatic, even in a situation such as this where it's completely unnecessary. Because it's paper. Because it's not real.

The blue crane flaps its wings once, keeps staring.

Morty stares back. For about ten seconds.

"Okay, so I did it," he tries to shrug it off, go for casual, like it's not a big deal. Because it isn't—it really, _really_ isn't. "I mean, can you honestly blame me? Y-y-you guys aren't supposed to be moving around!"

He's justifying himself to paper. He can't believe he's having this conversation. For that matter, why is he even still talking? The thing doesn't have a larynx, it's not gonna respond back to him.

"You're not real," he tells it, completely matter-of-factly. "You're just paper. Y-yyou don't have a brain. I—I could draw dicks all over you and there'd be nothing you could do about it."

He realizes only belatedly that he's scratching at his arms again; itching, itching, digging his nails in—and still, the crane just keeps staring at him. If it weren't for the slight shifting of its wings, Morty might almost think that sanity has returned and it'd gone back to being inanimate.

"Those wings don't even work," he mutters, more to himself than anything at this point, "and you can't—you _shouldn't_ be able to fly. You're not aerodynamic."

The blue crane turns away from him and bends down over its friend, poking lightly at what used to be a wing. With a tiny flap of its own wings, it hops over the padlock to reach the other crane's head and nudges that too.

And god help him, Morty feels a twinge of guilt.

He should go to bed; turn off his lights and climb under the covers and pretend he never saw either crane in the first place, because frankly, this whole thing is too stupid for him to be dealing with. He's also pretty sure that the number one rule to dealing with hallucinations is that you shouldn't feed in to your own delusions.

"I can fix your friend," is what comes out of his mouth instead, because he's a moron, and maybe he has some self-loathing issues, which is _another_ thing that runs in the family.

The blue crane looks back up at him abruptly, stares at him in a way that is no different from any of the other times, and yet somehow it feels like the thing's copping an attitude with him.

"W-what? You think I can't?"

The damn thing just sits there, and Morty swears the way it briefly looks him up and down and tilts its wings almost seems mocking, like it thinks he's so dumb, he can't figure out how to refold its friend or—or pick a lock, or figure out a stupidly complex math problem. If the crane had a voice at all, he bets it would sound like Rick.

Morty flicks at its stupid little head, and the crane jerks back an inch, practically indignant.

The time reads 10:23PM when he fetches his phone from his bed. If he did actually go to sleep right now, he could probably still get in a good seven hours of rest before he'd have to get up for school—or maybe more like… two or three hours, considering his track record these past few days—but what he does instead is pull open a YouTube video on folding paper cranes and puts it on mute.

No more musical crutch, no more blindly fumbling through the process and feeling sorry for himself; he doesn't care how sleep deprived he is, he's damn well going to learn how to do this _on his own_ even if it kills him.

* * *

 _TBC_


End file.
